


Hulkasaurus

by feldman, Thassalia



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Artists, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-02
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-24 07:12:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 88,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6145705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feldman/pseuds/feldman, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thassalia/pseuds/Thassalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce is not great at relationships, both too focused and too inconsistent, but he’s been pretty honest about that, and it’s not like Nat’s really in this town to stay.  He gives her until winter, when the nor’easters out of Canada dump a whole lake’s worth of snow right at your front door.  It's for the best; he has a tendency to lean on people until he crushes them.  But in the end, she's always been a bruiser; everyone she's ever loved has the scars to prove it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Trolley Ride Around the Neighborhood

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Good Fangs Make Good Neighbors](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/178855) by feldman. 



> This is our version of the coffeeshop AU - the artist colony AU.

[](http://smg.photobucket.com/user/rubberneck/media/Hulkasaurus%20cover.jpg.html)

Smartest thing Natasha ever did was finally let Stark Industries acquire her company, get out of tech and trade in her tiny San Francisco flat for a beach house on Lake Michigan.

She knows now that the dumbest thing she ever did was buy the house only looking at it once, when the neighbor was gone.

She's had two weeks of serene gorgeous views from her deck, where her yard slopes down from scrubby grass to bright sand, to water that stretches past the horizon, sky and white capped waves rolling in, the bright triangles of sailboats fresh out of storage for the season. She's even bought a set of watercolor tubes and a block of hot press paper from the strangely large art supply store in town.

The town of Drijfhout sounds like ‘drive out’, and is a weird mix of art and nostalgia, with a main street that’s gone picturesque and has a solid block parceled out into the kind of high-end artisan shops one sees in Tahoe, only smaller, more heartfelt.

She gets breakfast at the diner Wednesdays and Saturdays when she goes to buy groceries at the farmer’s market, where Bob with his long skinny ponytail and faded USMC tattoo already knows her name. Then she looks around and checks out the library and the options for non-solitary entertainment. It's limited but offers some variety. There’s a movie theater, and a Mexican place that looks questionable in an ostensibly Dutch town, though the Elks club does feature a salsa dancing night, and there’s a coffee shop with a counter selling handmade ice cream. There are six churches, which seems excessive, though one’s a Unitarian joint advertising a Rainbow Youth Alliance meeting. There are three art galleries, two gas stations, and a microbrewery.

Nat has time now, for sleeping in and doing enough yoga to start unknotting years spent bent over a keyboard, first hacking, then building something legit. In the afternoons she throws down some muddy washes, perversely enjoying the dissatisfaction, the freedom to waste her time failing to capture the shifting light with water and pigment.

She slips a knife into the block of paper and cuts the top sheet free, jamming it into the sand at her feet so it doesn’t blow away while she dozes in one of the plastic Adirondack chairs left by the previous owners. The Liebers had been an older couple, hearing impaired. It was a novelty that her lights flashed when the doorbell was rung. 

Lulled by the breeze and the play of light on her eyelids as clouds scudded across the sun, the screech of gulls and the lap of waves, she didn’t realize this was a more salient fact than the real estate agent had let on.

Not until her neighbor came back home to his yard, which was only screened off from hers by a thicket of dogwood and grape vines, fired up a welding torch, and started building a metal dinosaur.

A metal. Goddamned. Dinosaur. He's made them for years, the clerk at the art supply store tells her, metal frame sauropods all over the country. Big skeletal herbivores with vegetal designs on their horns and armoured plates, soldered vines twining up their bones. He’d been off in another state, installing a fantastical triceratops in a tech park in Portland.

The welding is the least of it, because he wears a thick hide jacket and a full helmet and the hiss and pops are relatively quiet. She can indulge in a clean neighborly hate and still pursue a life of leisure, read or paint, peevishly flicking rinse water from her brush against the boundary greenery that doesn’t quite screen out the flare of sparks in her peripheral vision. 

It's when he breaks out the ball peen hammer, the sledge, the heavy files; when he's crafting teeth and scales and claws with his shirt off and just that stupid hippy necklace swinging against his ridiculous seventies furry chest with each strike; when she finds her foot bobbing along at that tempo; that’s what shatters her composure about the whole thing and she starts peering through the scrub and trying to get a read on him.

His house is set farther back from the shore than hers, a narrower lot tucked in a copse of trees with a work yard set up. Six large squares of concrete slab, fronted by a two car garage with the doors open to reveal an array of tools and equipment, sheets and tubing and slabs of metal, a chest freezer, workbench, generator, and a hammock slung from the rafters but tied up out of the way.

His clothes are a wretched mess, utilitarian jeans gone tattered at the hems and knees, work boots with the leather scuffed so much the steel toe gleams out of the right one. Shirts are hit or miss, more often miss now that he’s doing tool work and the summer humidity is stifling.

That's when she sees his current project looks nothing like what the clerk had showed her on his phone while she picked out more brushes. This is the outline of a monstrous copper-chased dragon bristling with teeth and claws, shimmering with a handful of hammered scales turning green with patina.

She stows the tubes of watercolor in a kitchen drawer and unpacks the boxes from her own workshop and office, that had laid in the corner of her empty living room for a month. Soldering iron, tool boxes, cables, power supplies, this is the stuff she hasn’t used for years, not since the chips were designed and sourced cheaper. Then she’d had to focus on the code, and then on the business and the market, and then on the big blue corporate whale circling around her company looking to filter her out like krill.

She spends a whole afternoon sorting tools, ordering missing items and supplies, booting up the microcontrollers and cleaning up the code. She stuffs one into her pocket around sunset, fired up by the rasp of a file he’s been working for the last hour.

She pads over to his yard, through a gap between saplings where there’s not as much tangled underbrush. He’s got a worklight clipped to a strut of the dragon, another on a band around his head, both angled to not be visible from her house. She clears her throat between passes of the file and begins, "You know, if you're interested in collaboration...I could program it to breathe fire."

He looks up at her, a little startled, and she can see where flecks of metal shavings dot his skin, stick to the sweat and hair. 

It’s humid near the water, mosquitoes and gnats buzzing around in the near twilight. She bats them away idly, waits for him to reply.

He yanks the worklight from his head. His arms and chest are solid, lean muscle, and his hair is dark and curly, sticks to the back of his neck. It’s a surprisingly...decadent sight. A little dissolute. She’s always been a sucker for dissolute. In San Francisco, she knew a lot of folks whose labor was theoretical - long hours, commitment to their causes, across the board carpal tunnel, but they didn’t sweat much. Even the other artists she knew, the artisans and crafters, spent more time in basements and workshops with small, fine tools. 

“You’re my neighbor,” he says, looks around and spies his shirt hanging off a scale. He wipes his hands with it, and holds one out to shake. The surprise has been replaced by an amused grin.

“You’re making a dragon,” she says, incredulous. Of course she’s his neighbor; she walked over from her back deck just visible from his yard.

“Yeah.” He looks at her, and the shirt in his hands, and kind of dips his head like he knows he should be embarrassed a little, but isn’t so much. She just continues to look, and he puts on the shirt, halfheartedly buttons it like he’s only obeying social norms to test out what she does next. Her mouth twitches.

“Natasha--Nat,” she says. “And I don’t know if you do 21st century, but I can make that thing roar. Maybe some fire too, depending on where it’s intended to go. Fire codes, you know.”

“Bruce,” he says. “And it’s gonna be outdoors. So, fire codes aren’t a problem.”

They both wait a beat, and then he says. “It’s almost dark. I was thinking about taking this inside.”

Nat doubts that’s true. He worked well into the late hours last night, work lights tilted away from her property but hammer ringing unchecked, though maybe it’s occurring to him that he’s noisy as fuck and the sound carries. She waits. 

“Do you want to come in? Maybe have a drink?”

“Are you a serial killer?”

“No,” his smile is sly, “but would I tell you if I were?”

“I’m kidding,” she says, “I can take care of myself.”

~*~

Bruce has wine and iced tea and filtered water, something that was lunch meat a long time ago, and five types of mustard. She accepts a glass of white wine, which is crisp and biting and better than she expected, and looks around the house.

It’s comfortable, warm and open and inviting. Someone who cares about it lives here. She doesn’t know enough about him to know if it’s his stuff or if it was decorated. A wife, an ex, a boyfriend, a sibling, a parent, a someone. No ring, but that doesn’t mean anything, that could be a safety thing with his work. Once she'd melted a gold chain right off her wrist, brushing against an unplugged power supply that still held a charge.

He’s got a big buttery leather couch that looks good for napping and movies and tucking into with a project, the leather worn smooth and shiny in places. He’s got an equally hideous coffee table that seems to fit in the space anyway, made of logs and a hunk of beveled glass.

“I heard you’re a genius,” he says, which is a pretty good opening gambit. He leans against the snack bar in the kitchen.

There are drawings all over it, the dragon sketched out at varying scales, the detailing beautiful and wild and precise, some of them diagrammed with arrows and equations. He pushes them towards the center, but she can see that there are coffee rings and wine stains on them anyway.

“Who told you that?” She actually wants to know.

He shrugs a shoulder, and buttons up the rest of the shirt, pushes his hair around but just ends up looking more like a delectable mess. She thinks he must wreak havoc on the local gossip scene--she’s already aware there’s not a lot to do, not a lot to talk about aside from each other, and apparently now her.

“I’m good at what I do,” Nat finally says. “I don’t know if that makes me a genius.”

“I guess we’ll see,” he says, and pours himself a deep red that smells like dark cherry and wood smoke. “I know a few geniuses. Mostly they’re hard to live with.”

It turns out he’s divorced. She asks because she doesn’t want to hint. She’s not here for that conversation, but she notes it, nonetheless.

“I’m hard to live with too,” Bruce explains.

“Transitive property?” she asks, which earns her another harsh laugh.

“Technically?”

She’s intrigued. “Yeah.”

“Technically, yes.”

Her stomach growls and he gets this look on his face like he’s forgotten something, and asks her what day it is. “Thursday,” she says.

He groans. “That explains the empty fridge--I should have pulled something from the freezer this morning. Other than that, I might have some crackers.”

She takes a deep breath. “I’ve got steaks,” she says. “A gift from my brother. Housewarming present. But I don’t cook, and I didn’t put them in the freezer, and now they’ll go bad if I don’t eat them.”

“Do you have a grill?”

She shakes her head. “I’ve got a frying pan. Also a gift. Clint thought he was being funny.”

Bruce sets down his wine, goes around to the drawers in the well-appointed kitchen.

“I can loan you tongs and a spatula,” he says, and puts them on the counter like he’s looking to make a trade.

“You don’t have any food, and I don’t have any furniture,” she says. “So maybe I should bring the food over here.”

She’s not usually this amenable, certainly not with someone she doesn’t know, but she’s a little bored and this is the most interesting thing she’s done in a week. The risk versus reward scale shifts when she’s idle, and she likes the wine, likes this house, the detail work on those drawings paired with the math of creating a stable structure, and the solid feel of his hand when they shook, calloused and firm. She trusts her judgement here.

She brings back the steaks and tiny fingerling potatoes and a bag of greens plus garlic and butter and olive oil. He’s run through the shower while she’s gone, smells like soap and sun and water, though honestly she hadn’t minded the sweat.

“Nice spread for someone who doesn’t cook.”

“I like to buy produce out here,” she says. “Bob thinks I might be vitamin deficient. I think I’m just easily swayed by pretty colors.”

He sets her to work chopping things, oiling the potatoes and sprinkling them with herbs and salt and pepper.

“How come you have all the stuff to cook, but no food?”

“Why do you have food you can’t cook?”

It’s a stand-off, but they both grin at each other. He breaks first.

“My pantry’s pretty bare right now, and I worked all day Saturday and missed the market. I didn’t want to trek all the way out to the Meijer when I could pick up something fresh on Wednesday, but I lost track of the week, so here I am.”

“Bob’s putting together some kind of hybrid CSA at the community center, you could go subscription.”

He shakes his head. “I travel a fair amount in the summer, I don’t like for things to go to waste.”

He sears the steaks, then bastes them in the butter and rendered fat, a precise and hypnotic movement.

“It’s a treat,” he says. “I don’t eat a lot of red meat these days.”

She switches to his red when they sit down at the counter, and closes her eyes at the taste, an involuntary reflex that’s more about how long it’d been since she ate a meal someone had prepared at home than the luxury of the steak, though it is a luxury.

“Why don’t you have any furniture?” he asks, takes a sip, looks at her intently.

She cuts a potato in half, thinks about it. “I lived in a studio,” she says finally. “Didn’t need much. I never had a reason to acquire it before. We moved around a lot, when I was a kid. So now…” she shrugs. “My sister-in-law is threatening to throw darts at the Ikea catalogue and order accordingly, so that at least everyone will have a place to sleep when they come by in August.”

“This place was part of the Arts and Crafts movement,” he says, like that might mean something to her. “There’s a bunch of beautiful stuff out there, people still making Stickley models and Mission style if you’re into it.”

“I don’t even know.” She’s also usually not this honest with people. “I guess I should check it out.”

He gives a throaty laugh, and they move on to talk about how to get a copper dinosaur to come to life.

There’s a moment, before she leaves, walking back across the join of their properties when she thinks she could push him, see what he reveals. They’re strangers still, but they’ve shared a meal, shown their talents. A handshake is weird, a hug too intimate. Finally, she brushes her mouth against his cheek, and his fingers rest slightly on her hip, and she thinks, for just a heartbeat, of pressing this. His eyes are dark, and she suspects he doesn’t do this either, that he’s also testing something, but she moves away and just says thank you, and goodnight, and I’ll see you soon. 

~*~

Natasha spends the next day writing the code for opening and closing the dragon’s jaw. Her soldering iron isn’t getting hot enough, and the project shows her how much of her work station had gone missing since she’s made anything, things she didn’t notice on the first pass when she unpacked. It’s not like she thought she was going to leave her livelihood behind, but she hadn’t really considered taking on a new project so soon.

She’s going to have get inside the mouth, see how he’s attached the hinge of the jaw, figure out the micro-movements that will make the whole thing feel more realistic.

Laura calls as she’s sketching out the logistics, and Nat puts her on speaker.

“Do you think that if I just accidentally lost one of these kids at the mall for an hour or two, someone would call social services?”

Nat laughs. “You’re not worried about them getting kidnapped, just looking bad?”

“Trust me, no one’s kidnapping them. They’re terrorists. It’s like they sprang fully formed from Clint. I can’t believe my DNA is even in the older two. I found Cooper hanging upside down in the stairwell the other day, like a goddamned bat. He said you and Clint used to get up in the crawlspaces, dangle down and scare each other.”

“Laura I love you, but do you need something?”

“We’re coming up that first weekend in August. Clint’ll be home, finally. I just wanted to prepare you.”

Laura pauses, and Nat waits. “Spit it out,” she says finally.

“How are you? You sounded kind of… lonely last week.”

“I’m not lonely.”

“Really.” A different kind of pause. Laura’s always been the best kind of nosy. If she hadn’t been, Nat and Clint really would have remained feral, gone rabid, ended up a scourge on the world. She’d saved Clint, and given him the stability to save Nat.

“My neighbor makes giant sculptures. Loudly. At all hours.”

“And?”

“I went over to introduce myself yesterday.”

“Huh.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing. What’s he like?”

“I didn’t say he.”

“Oh please. You’re being all cagey, I can hear it even on speaker. It’s a he. So, worth the noise?”

“Maybe.”

“Sounds like Captain America has a rival.”

Nat snorts, but it’s been a few days since she talked to Steve. She should feel worse about that than she does, but it’s not like they’d had a lot of time together before she left. Between their careers it had been like a long distance relationship where they shared a bed, but since they also shared a history it still worked, it was comfortable. But there hadn’t been a lot of discussion about what it meant for her to drift her golden parachute into the Midwest.

“Let me guess, he’s a crusty old hippy who looks like Iggy Pop. Snow white walrus moustache. Only drinks kombucha.”

“No, that’s my grocer, Bob.” She takes the phone off speaker, hearing the swish of Bruce’s screen door through her open kitchen window. “He’s interesting. His work is interesting. I don’t know, he’s...something.”

“Nat, don’t go chasing interesting just because you’re bored. Get a hobby.”

“I did,” she says. “Monsters. I’m gonna animate some monsters.”

~*~

Bruce is wearing a worn thin t-shirt, and Nat wonders if it’s for her benefit. She would have told him not to bother. 

She waves, and he puts down the file, shoves his goggles up on top of his head. It makes him look kind of rakish.

“I looked up Mission style,” she says. “I like it.”

He grins.

“I want to go buy furniture, but I don’t have a truck.”

“Ah, but I do.”

She nods.

“How do you know you’re gonna find something you like?”

“I’m sure I’ll find something I like well enough.”

“No,” he says, dragging the goggles off his head. “That’s not how it works. You should have things you love around you. If you’re gonna bother.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“We’ll go into town. I’ll introduce you to some folks, you can look. See up close what you like.”

“I don’t want to bother you,” she says, although that’s not true. She expressly wanted to bother him, or she wouldn’t be out here.

“It’s okay,” he says. “I’d like it. Honestly. You can buy me lunch.”

“Fair,” she says.

He changes into a loose button down that doesn’t fit quite right, and she follows him to the garage behind the house, but he walks right past the battered 4Runner parked outside that she’s seen rattling back and forth from his driveway to the road. Instead, he pulls a helmet down from a peg, hands it to her, and gestures to an ancient Triumph Bonneville stashed inside with the tools.

“Jesus,” she says, “Aren’t you too old to be a hipster?”

His reply would be defensive if it wasn't delivered with such a slow dry blink. “I’ve had this bike since college.”

“Yeah, I bet.” It is a beauty, if a little battered.

He puts his own helmet on. It’s presumptuous. She kinda likes it. As a play, it’s hilarious.

“This way,” he says, “you can’t bring anything home without thinking about it first.”

“Fine,” she says, “I'll let you rein in my enthusiasm, but I want to pilot this thing on the way back.”

~*~

Peggy has pin up hair, worn Carhartt overalls, and is missing a pinky. She’s bright and pretty and in charge, clearly the big cheese around here, and god, she makes beautiful furniture.

Nat runs her hands over the sweeping curved back of an Adirondack style recliner, wood so dark and warm that it feels alive. Leather that’s supple, firm, threaded with a future. The chair is already prepping to be an heirloom for generations ahead. She can imagine generations of overtired Bartons snuggled into submission in this chair.

Bruce is chatting with Peggy about a communal garden and a welding project, resting against the doorframe to the woodshop, arms loosely crossed. She’d thought they were going to look in the stores, antique shops and designer showplaces, but instead, he’s taken her to the source.

“That’s my favorite,” Peggy says, voice clipped and precise, but not cold. “Modern luxury, classic styling. It was hell to get right, but now it keeps the lights on.”

“How much?” Nat asks. She doesn’t care. She’ll pay whatever it takes. There's a thrum of guilty pleasure in just being able to think that.

Peggy names a price that represents more money than Clint paid for the Ford Probe that Nat’s driving.

“Yes,” she says, because what’s the point of stupid amounts of money if she doesn’t spend it on something decadent.

“I’m making lunch,” Peggy says, “Stay.”

“Nat? You up for that?” Bruce’s mouth quirks at the corner. “Or do you need some alone time with the chair?”

“Sure,” she says. “But, no, I’m good. I know what I want.”

Peggy exchanges a look with Bruce that she can’t quite read. 

“Don’t get too attached to that one, it’s earmarked already. But I can have another one for you by August. I’ll also send you to Phil’s. He’s been doing some lovely work with upcycling couches and settees, if that’s something you’d like. His work is on the other end of the spectrum from this, really interesting modern stuff that doesn’t feel like it came out of a Kubrick film. Might be a nice contrast.”

“Thanks,” Bruce says. “We’ll head over there after lunch.”

~*~

Phil is not what she expects, but instead a man with a precise haircut in a crisp button down and pressed slacks overseeing a team of young apprentices.

Whereas Peggy’s workshop was homey and intimate, WrekerWerks feels like a factory or a maker space, buzzing and functional. There are stations of fabrics, materials, machines and busy young folks experimenting with textures and torches and stencils and band saws.

“Peggy called,” Phil comes over, shakes Bruce’s hand and then hers. “Thought you might like a tour.”

Two people are disassembling a bathtub with an eye toward making it a couch, speaking in half sentences they snippily finish for each other. A young woman with furiously black hair is wrapping an innertube in contrasting strips of wool. A boy with thick red framed glasses is applying batik to the top of a desk with a mid-century modern top and a battered elephant statue as a base.

Phil takes them back to his office where an ancient trashcan lid has been painted with concentric circles of red, white and blue with a star in the middle. It’s mounted to the wall next to the can, black metal with angry red octopi stenciled in rows up and down the ridges.

Nat starts to laugh. “I don’t suppose that’s for sale?”

“That’s a one off,” Phil shakes his head. “My pet project.”

“I have a friend it would be perfect for.” She pauses, “Although I’m not sure he’d appreciate the joke.”

~*~

There’s something sharp and focused in the way Nat looks around the workshops, the way she catalogues the environment and staff, like she’s filing everything away for later.

Bruce recognizes that sharpness - situational awareness even in this haven of luxury furniture and good-feeling ethos. It’s the product of having to watch your back, take care of yourself, no one to manage your shit for you. She’s lush and beautiful, and combined with that edge, with her quick mind, the way she keeps things tight to herself, she is undeniably appealing.

He hasn’t enjoyed anything in ages as much as their back and forth about wiring up Ethelred, the mechanics and the coding, the point and purpose. Well, that’s a lie, but he’s not quite willing to think about how much he enjoyed the feeling of her thighs pressed against his hips as they rode into town, the confidence of her hands on his ribs and the easy way she leaned into the turns, anticipating his movements, effortless.

How he might be anticipating the argument about letting her steer on the way back, and the feel of her waist under his hands when he inevitably gives in. It’s a dangerous road, he thinks. 

Phil asks her a question about her design aesthetic and she looks at Bruce over her shoulder, and he shrugs, “It’s just a question we ask around here.”

“Developing,” Nat answers Phil, eyebrow raised in half a jest. “I like that desk in there, with the elephant--”

“Hunter calls it an Ele-scritoire,” Phil shares, spreading the pain, “We've been calling it Deskbo.”

“You're horrible people here, Phil.”

“We encourage a culture of improvisation and iterative refinement of ideas. Also, he started it with the puns.”

“Could be a marketing angle in there somewhere.” Nat tilts her head in thought. “But nothing will persuade me to park my ass in a former bathtub to watch tv.”

Damn it, he likes how easy she is, here in this place, talking to his friends.

“Fair enough,” Phil says, leading her over to where a handful of seventies era cabinet televisions have been gutted and re-proportioned to fit modern equipment; contrasting wood expansion joints and new metal fittings. “Let me show you what Daisy’s been working on this year; sky’s the limit with that kid.”

~*~

They take a break to drink lemonade at a roadside cafe, so manufactured to be rustic and homey it makes Nat’s teeth hurt, but the lemonade is real and perfectly tart and she has to force herself to sip, take it slow as she squints at him across the picnic table.

“So,” he says, and she can feel the curiosity carefully banked. “You’ve got a friend.”

Smart guys, she thinks. She’s used to being the smartest person in any room, doling out information, sussing out what she wants. But Bruce is perceptive. He chews on some of the ice in his drink, and quirks his mouth at her. But it’s that same line they’ve been dancing around - attraction, interest, piqued curiosity, this strange ease that can spring up between strangers who spark off each other. And she needs to be honest, maybe with herself more than anything.

“Yeah,” she says. “Friend. Boyfriend. What a stupid word.” She feels a little guilty, like she’s been hiding something.

“Boyfriend didn’t come out here with you though?”

She takes a large swallow of the drink, bright and tart, and sighs. “He’s a lawyer in San Francisco. Appellate case law. He’s a save the world type. A really good guy. He’ll probably be president someday, or a judge.”

“And?”

“And I’m also difficult to live with. I didn’t...we’re negotiating.”

“Sounds romantic.”

“Well, he is a lawyer. He argues for a living.”

“You love him?”

She looks at him sharply, and he puts up his hands. “I’m not prying, really. I...love doesn’t always mean much beyond making things hurt more. It doesn’t necessarily change what you want, what you can give.”

The frankness of that makes something tighten in her belly, but the way his face goes taut and serious makes the hard truth feel compassionate, like gentle fingers over a bruise.

“I don’t think Steve and I see the same things, when we look at the future.” It feels like pulling teeth to say that, to admit it, but it’s a truth she’s utterly certain of, one that’s been humming in her skull for a year, as real as the fact that she loves Steve but doesn’t really miss him, not like she should. “We were friends, and then we were more, and I keep thinking that was a mistake...but whether that’s my shit, or his…maybe just wanting different things. He’s a good man, he is...but I don’t know that I’m good for him. Or if I even want to be.”

She chokes to a stop with a wry smile and tries to dissolve the catch in her throat with the lemonade. She didn’t mean to say half of that. She watches Bruce take it in, dial back his intensity so she has some breathing room.

There's only ice left, and she shakes the cup, willing it to melt. “Sorry,” she says, but she’s not. You lay out truths to get them back, and even if it wasn’t intentional, she recognizes strategy in what she’s done. She wants some of his truths, and she’s willing to trade for them. 

He shakes his head, like it’s fine that she unloaded, he’s the one who asked about love in the first place. And he’s quiet, but it’s not awkward or heavy, it’s soothing.

“You up for one more stop?” he asks, but when she nods, he offers her his hand to pull her up off the bench. His fingers are warm, and he squeezes her hand with this solid reassurance that’s grounding and real and unexpected. When she swings her leg over the bike, snugging up to his back, there’s a moment, however brief, where she thinks of wrapping her arms around his chest and pressing her cheek to his shoulder blade.

Instead, she settles into the easy, casual grip she’d adopted previously and follows the lean of his body as he steers into the curve of the road.

~*~

The Red Rooster sounds like a honky-tonk, but is actually stuffed to the gills with luxury kitchen supplies, knick knacks, cookbooks, and some surprisingly practical homegoods. Bruce waves to Wanda, asks her about college, inquires after her grandmother who owns the shop.

“She’s at a fiber fair in Ohio, sourcing textiles. My brother drove the truck, since she doesn’t do manual.” Wanda delicately plucks at a row of pie birds on a shelf, putting them in rainbow order from cardinals to purple martins. “I’m orphaned and alone.”

“While they drive each other crazy arguing about speed limits.” Bruce shares a smile with Wanda.

“His luck is going to run out sooner rather than later, driving like that through Ohio with Michigan plates.”

“Do you really know everyone?” Nat asks, and bumps him a little with her elbow.

“Population is less than a thousand people in the winter,” he says. “You get cozy or you go stir crazy.”

Nat wanders over to a line of novelty salt and pepper shakers and table wares, picks up a vicious looking metal hen and rooster set with feathers like shimmering scales.

She raises an eyebrow at him. “Seriously?”

He’s a little sheepish, but the damned things sell like hotcakes. They’re tedious and fiddly with the tin snips and the spot welds, and he’s going to have to give in this winter and either make a cast for them or just sell off the design. It’s a practical solution even if he hates to commercialize his babies. He crosses his arms. “The chicken is probably the closest descendant from dinosaurs.”

“Well, these do look like they’d peck out your eyes at a shady glance.”

“That’s the idea.”

He leaves her alone with the chickens, goes to the back and finds a bright green silicone spatula, tongs, and a slotted spoon. She’s picking through spices, and handmade silicone bowl covers that look like flowers, and tiny, delicate sauce containers, sushi stands shaped like cranes and koi.

Wanda wraps the utensils with a bow so they look like misguided tulips.

He holds them behind his back, and she approaches the counter with the hen and rooster.

“No,” he says. “Just...if you really want them later, I’ll make you a set.”

“C’mon,” she says, handing the hen to Wanda and petting the rooster tucked in her arm. “I want to support local business. I’m gonna send them to my sister-in-law.”

He gives in with a sigh, and when they get outside, he hands her the bouquet of utensils.

She purses her mouth, eyes bright, full of laughter.

“This way you can get things back out of the frying pan.”

She accepts them like an offering, puts them in her bag.

“Thank you,” she says. “Now hand over the keys, I still want to drive.”

~*~

“So hey, do you need a toothbrush?”

She really needs to pace the wine better, she realizes, noticing her cheeks feel warm. “I'm sorry?”

Bruce has the grace to look a little flustered, and she thinks maybe he's not hitting on her, maybe he's just too straightforward to drop a bottle of mouthwash in her mailbox. He scrambles up and heads down the hall, calling over his shoulder, “I, uh, well…”

She reluctantly follows, still clutching the wine glass. He's flung open a cabinet that looks like he's shoved a hygiene aisle into. He launches into an explanation that's part extreme couponing, part black market, and part Ponzi scheme, involving customer and fuel points with six companies, accumulated discounts, cycling through gift cards, swapping with neighbors, a wine auction email list he haunts for the proprietors of the Gilded Lily, “Lily drinks local, but Gilda prefers southern France, last week I scored her a case of Chateauneuf du Pape for nearly a song…” He shrugs.

“You’ve got stashes all over this place, don’t you.”

“Not anymore, this is last of it. Last summer Ellie, my oldest, kept giving me grief over the ‘egregious consumerism’, and honestly, it’d started to feel like the ass end of a pyramid scheme to stash factory overproduction.” He lays his hand over his heart, “Strictly fuel points and the wine thing these days. But I do still have all this, and...I’d say your speed is soft bristle, compact head?”

She sips, eyeing the wall of pastel handles and then him. “I like red.”

He reaches in without looking and pulls out a fire engine red number with a racing stripe. Compact head, super soft bristles.

“Thank you. So you’re set for life, then.”

“Well, not like you of course, besides…” He grabs the cabinet door and shakes his head at his own folly, “Does deodorant go bad?”

“Just out of style. The scents.” His cabinet smells like his bathroom, mint and pumice soap and a hint of bay rum. “You could give it away, you know, to those less…”

“Fortunate?”

“I was looking for a more polite way of saying ‘odd’, but yes, let’s go with fortunate.”


	2. Willkommen

“I looked up your neighbor.”

Natasha’s determined to re-create the greens they’d had the other night. It really can’t be that hard, but here she is, knife in hand and no further idea of where to go with the chopped up bunch of chard and kale. “It’s ominously quiet on your end, did you actually lose those kids somewhere?”

“They’re with my sister, terrorizing her kids. They’re fine. The little guy’s with me, though. I’m determined to keep him from reaching his potential.”

“I’m cooking,” Nat looks dubiously at the olive oil, garlic and red pepper. There’s an order of operations to it, she should be able to figure it out.

She realizes there's been a long silence when Laura finally asks, “Are you dying?”

“No. I just… how hard can it be?” She’d text Bruce, ask him how he made the greens, but she doesn’t actually know his number. She has a sneaking suspicion that he might not have a cell phone. There’s a clunky rotary in a telephone nook in the entrance to the kitchen that she thought was a design flourish, dandelion yellow with a long cord, but she now suspects it’s actually functional.

“You’re really not dying?”

“Laura,” she says sharply. “How’d you look him up?”

“Not that many people make giant dinosaur sculptures in Western Michigan. It’s not like I need your skill set to work the Google.”

“Fair point.”

“How come you didn’t? Look him up, I mean.”

Nat sighs, heats up the pan Clint gave her, puts oil in it. How hard can this be? “Because. It seemed like a...violation of his privacy.”

Laura snorts. “He’s got a wikipedia page, Nat. You could have just read the basics.”

“You know I have a hard time with temptation. First it’s his wiki, then more search engines, then it’s credit card statements, school records, deleted emails. The government has asked nicely that I don’t utilize my talents in that way anymore, so, no.”

“Anyway, I looked him up for you. He’s a doctor.”

That doesn’t jive. He’s calm and patient, but she thinks that’s kind of an act, or at least a buffer, and he’s way too curious for the daily grind of wrapping ankles, delivering shots. “Not a medical doctor.” 

“Nope; high energy experimental physics at MIT. Wrote some papers. Won some awards, then just...dropped out. Started building shit a few years later.”

Nat feels it like an itch - the need to dig in, dig deeper, find out more about him. That itch nearly got her thrown in federal prison, but it also funded her company. She was extremely good at finding out things people didn’t want her to know, and she earned a lot of money digging. People don’t much surprise her, never really had.

She hums, fussily peeling a clove of garlic.

She knew he’d had a life before this, but she thought it was normal people shit - early marriage, a couple kids too soon, bad blood and bad choices and divorce. She’d have said drugs, maybe, though if so he straightened out without any signs of twelve-stepping. Mood disorder possibly, and she thinks she might still be right about that one. Lots of that in the tech world, and he’s so very, very careful about certain things that it smacks of therapeutic insight.

Nat finds herself strangely protective of his dignity, his privacy. “He’s a nice guy, Laura. I’m leaving him alone. He can tell me what he wants to tell me.”

“This from the woman who put together a dossier on the squeakiest guy in middle America?”

The oil is smoking. That can’t be good. She slides the pan off the burner and opens a window. “I was a different person then.”

Laura laughs, a little bitter, but it’s for Nat, not against her. “You’re the same person, baby, you’re just altering your strategy.”

~*~

Tony always calls in the middle of the night; he never has slept like a normal person. Bruce is also awake, even though he shouldn’t be.

A sleep deficit is a bad sign, sometimes it's the brain chasing the euphoria of exhaustion as a palliative, but that awareness doesn't stop his thoughts and his blood from buzzing. He knows there’s no point to laying there, his mind spinning out in directions it shouldn’t, toward lush, soft forbidden skin and strong thighs, or alternately down the well worn path of his failures. Work is better. It’s something tangible for the hours spent.

He’s making a small scale model of the dragon jaw so Nat can play around with something scalable. He holds the phone between his shoulder and his ear, laying the soldering iron on the pad and poking at the hinge with the tweezers.

He can also see, through his kitchen window, the flicker of her television screen in the living room. He wonders if she’s asleep or awake, or what she's even sitting on if she has no furniture. If she's working or just flicking channels. He doesn’t really miss television, but he misses the intimacy of hanging out on a couch, warm shoulders in the crook of his arm, breathing together, his kid’s head on his thigh, or shoving at him with pointed toes and knobby heels. 

“What’s up green bean?”

“One time,” Bruce loves Tony like a brother, but the man's a rat terrier with some things. “One time I get drunk and sing _The Rainbow Connection_ at karaoke. One time.”

“Maybe I'm still trying to determine if you count yourself amongst the set of lovers and dreamers, or separate,” Tony says, “Oh, and there was also that time you destroyed the C/S department's scale model of Boston like Godzilla because they’d interrupted your data sets, but you know, it really is the Kermit thing.”

“And I went to anger management counseling for that, thank you very much. They even gave me a certificate to show the judge.”

“I just can't let it go because there's a monster in the Boston Harbor tea party joke there, but it eludes me even now.”

“You know when you do find it, it's gonna feel like a stroke.”

They joke about it now, but the reality had been ugly, brutal and frustrating, and there’d been a very real possibility that the university would have expelled him if Tony’s family hadn’t stepped in, vouched to get him some help, if he hadn’t been barely more than a kid, alone and playing above his pay grade socially, below it academically.

Tony, being Tony, was convinced that the way to move past ugliness was to turn it into a badge of honor, but that worked better when you were the prodigal son of a captain of industry instead of the fucked up result of two people caught in a brutal cycle, who’d died together fighting over the wheel, car sliding into icy water.

That Tony had stuck around when it escalated again a few years later, Bruce still couldn’t quite account for; there were far easier and less damaging people to be friends with, even for someone as difficult and off-putting as Tony. It hadn't just been another incident, but an escalating series of them as Bruce spiraled, raging against the depression and darkness that threatened to swallow him whole. Anger was the only thing that had kept him moving at all, and that was a dangerous fuel, an unshielded nuclear reactor going critical, melting down, harming innocents.

Bruce reminds himself that he’s up in the first place to keep from chasing his tail like this. He asks Tony, “You working?” 

“Just dicking around. I bought this company, negotiation like wrestling with a bear, just ridiculous, but worth it. Now I’m trying to figure out whether I want to cannibalize the code work and algorithms to use in my stuff or just re-up the patents. Brilliant work, really. Angles I hadn’t thought of yet, plus I got a new head of network security out of the deal.”

Bruce adjusts the angle of the neck, using rubber bands for tendons. The dragon will need to bend a little more in the chest to keep stable. He’s going to have to do a new set of welds on the big guy.

“You okay?” 

It’s not like Tony to be concerned. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“No reason, I just heard.” Tony hesitates and Bruce thinks he knows where this is going. “Look, I heard that Bets is finally marrying that guy.”

“It’s fine Tony, really. They’ve been together for a long time. Albert’s a good guy. Stable. He makes her happy. David gets along with him, and Ellie’s busy with school and her research project. I’m happy for Betty.”

“That’s good. I mean, if you’d wanted to have a blowout feel sorry for yourself fest, I’d have flown in, but you sound...good.”

“I’m fine. Keeping track of things. Running. Eating right. Got a project. An unexpected collaborator.” 

“Oh, do tell.”

He takes advantage of Tony's response to new shiny things to avoid saying anything about sleep, or drinking a bit too much wine with a compelling woman, because he’s allowed one miss but he's pretty sure he's working on at least two.

~*~

Nat picked up a flyer for a kickboxing class at the community center and she glances down at it while she pushes into downward dog. She’d taken some krav maga in San Francisco, liked kicking the shit out of stuff. The yoga is good for stretching, getting her mind somewhere centered, but there’s a lack of aggression that she finds frustrating. She’s maybe not meant to find inner harmony.

When Bruce knocks, she’s rolling the yoga mat up, sticking it in the corner by the tv. The living room is still sans real furniture except for the plastic Adirondack chairs from the yard.

He’s wearing jogging shorts old enough to be cut on the short side and a t-shirt with the arms missing, headphones around his neck, and he’s got a package in his hand. He’s sweaty from his run, but he smells good - sunbaked skin and dandelion pollen.

“You run,” she says, as he hands her the box.

“Gotta be prepared if something decides to chase you,” he says, cheeky. “Erik was confused.”

“Erik was chasing you?”

“Erik’s the UPS guy.”

“Of course you know the UPS guy’s name,” she murmurs half to herself. “That happen often?”

“The confused UPS guy or being chased?”

“Either. Both.”

“Nah,” he says, “Well, Erik never really looks at the address on the box since most things in this stretch are for me, but he’ll figure it out.”

“I’ve got coffee,” she says. “If you want to come in.” It’s the first time she’s invited him, and she wonders if he’s just being nice, or if he’s showing up to get a look inside. She’d have done the same.

He fiddles with the edge of the door, and she resists the temptation to pull him inside anyway. She’s wearing leggings and a sports bra and not much else, giving him something to look at, and his gaze flicks over her, looks away, then back. She leans against the doorjamb.

“I’d love to, but,” he hesitates, scrubbing at the back of his head. He’s all bouncy, nervous energy this morning. “Can’t. I’m skyping with my agent at nine, and I need to shower. Freida looks disapproving if I’m not at least presentable. Rain check?”

“Aha, that means you do own something from this century. And sure. Whenever. I’ve got the french press down to a science. Jury’s still out on the frying pan though.”

“Aww, I noticed a little smokiness.”

“I may need more thorough instruction on the cooking,” she says. “Step by step lists. Something.”

“There are these magic things called recipes, kinda like instructables for food…” he says.

She makes her face deliberately blank. “Never heard of them.”

“Let me see what I can do,” he says, and gives her a half wave, half salute as he heads across to his yard.

“Hey,” she calls after him. “Does that mean you actually have a phone number?”

He just waves a hand over his head.

“I will figure it out!” she shouts, watches him walk back to his back door, then tears open the package. She makes herself unpack and sort out the supplements to her workstation, shower and change before she opens up the laptop.

It takes her five minutes to find an unlisted number for his house phone, largely because she’s not trying that hard, and about fifteen seconds after that she has his Skype handle.

She’s tempted to call him just to let the phone ring, but she decides not to tip her hand. He is on a business call, after all. Instead she gets her mountain bike out of her little one-car garage and heads into town. 

Phil had invited her to come look at some dining room tables. She likes, suddenly, the idea of having somewhere to sit and linger over a meal. She ends up spending the afternoon in the workshop, learning how to stencil chalky paint onto antique furniture.

“If you come back next week, I’ll have someone show you how to use the die-cut to make your own stencil.”

She adds her name to the large paper calendar tacked near the door, putting her number down in the margin, and adds the appointment to her phone. It’s the only thing she has scheduled this month.

Bruce is still working outside when she rolls back up her drive. He’s totally focused, headphones on and eyes keen, hands precise as he methodically blunts the edge of a tooth so it still looks sharp but is safe to touch. She stops to watch him, far enough away that he can’t see her, and long enough that she feels uncomfortable with herself and takes her small pack of groceries into the house. 

She got stuff to make salad while she was out, and she eats it in the living room lawn chair, drinking beer and scrolling through her tablet. The patio door is open, but she can only see the shore, and she watches the waves until she feels a little more pure of thought.

Bruce is gone for a few days, a possible commission piece in Denver. She checks out the kickboxing class which is satisfying in all the right ways, lead by a volunteer EMT and school counselor named Sam who knows his class mostly attracts women and therefore wears the kind of pants guaranteed to reward their loyalty and keep them coming back. Nat also spends a lot of time at Phil’s sussing out his business model, which is part vocational apprenticeship, part makerspace, part small business incubator. She comes home one day in the delivery van, and Daisy helps her unload what her receipt says is a floor lamp and a television stand.

Nat has to ride back with Daisy, who’s still on a learner’s permit, and when she returns on her bike Bruce is back in residence.

She can’t stand it anymore and calls him.

“You figured out my number,” he says.

“I got your number all right,” she says, feeling corny, schoolgirl fresh. Except she’d never had to use lines as a girl to get attention; good or bad it followed her wherever she went. “Wanna come over and stare at my giant tv screen while I program microchips? You can bring the tiny dinosaurs.”

There’s a long pause, and she thinks he’s going to say no. She preps herself, because really, there’s no reason for him to say yes.

“I’ve got beer,” she says.

“Well, in that case.”

Bruce comes over in a pair of beaten leather sandals which he sheds near her back door, as his work yard is a minefield of metal slivers even with regular sweeping. His feet are pale, toes and insteps dusted with hair, oddly vulnerable looking outside of the boots.

“From Angie,” He hands over a plate of brownies. “Peggy’s assistant. She picked me up at the airport.”

Nat’s been in town long enough to wonder if the brownies only have chocolate, but she doesn’t ask, watching him assess the living room. The deck chairs are still there, but a metal standing lamp floats with an alien kind of beauty in the corner, sleek and lovely and lending them a graceful light, along with the seventies era television cabinet modified to house her flat screen and Apple TV, dark Spanish colonial wood and new brass fittings with teardrop handles of red glass swirled with black.

“Want the five cent tour?”

Bruce trails her through the office, peeking in the bathroom with its claw foot tub and original tile work in sea green edged in black, the fancy shower and new stone flooring a harmonizing slate blue, with fluffy rugs the color of coral. “Nice.”

She agrees. “I may have bought this place for that bathroom. I wired up bluetooth speakers in the corners behind the built-ins. When it gets cold, I’m gonna stay in that bathtub for a whole day.” 

Her bedroom is the first indication a person truly lives there. The contrast illustrates the life she’s coming from, where home was only a place to sleep, or worse yet a place to keep the awesome bed she wasn’t sleeping in. It’s a dream even without a frame, box spring and a high mattress, soft bedding in cool shades of grey with hints of poppy-bright flowers and cream lines. It’s inviting. There’s a scratched up dresser and one end-table with a reading lamp and water bottle, a caddy full of fussy amenities to counter the annoyances that thwart sleep. 

The room is finished with a little bookshelf and a big collage frame of photos. She points out her family - brother and sister-in-law, friends, niece and nephews, one of whom is a round burbling baby named after her. “As we say, Nate with a silent E.”

In one, a big, good-looking blond holds the two bigger kids under both arms in front of a pool, chest chiseled, smile wide, eyes serious.

“Steve,” she says.

“Wow.”

“I know,” she says, “He’s barely human. Actually, he’s very human. And very kind. Laura calls him Captain America. He hates that. Actually, I think he secretly loves it, but he’d never cop to it.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah.”

There’s another photo in the corner, a young Nat, maybe eighteen, leaning against a dark-eyed boy the same age. Her eyes are colorless water encircled with kohl staring into the camera as the boy looks at her like she’s an oasis.

“James,” she says. “First love.”

He turns to her. “I know a little bit about that.”

She nods. “Got himself killed. We’d broken up a long time before that, barely speaking by then though we didn’t admit it. He was a mess, and I was a mess when I was with him, bad decisions all around but…” she shrugs. “Everyone’s stupid at that age, and love makes it ten times worse.”

Bruce gives her a rueful smile. “Yeah.”

She puts her fingers against the frame. “He and Steve, they were friends as kids. That’s how we met. I looked him up when we both ended up in California. He needed a friend, and I wanted to cry on someone’s shoulder over the waste. And then we just...kept meeting.”

She steers him out of the bedroom, gets him a beer and a paper towel for the brownie, gestures him into a lawn chair. He lounges back, the metal click of the adjustment echoing oddly off the living room walls.

“Be glad I’m this civilized,” she says, as if copping to it, pointing out a deficit so he doesn’t have to.

Bruce clinks the bottle against hers and shakes his head in mild disagreement, “You’re plenty civilized.”

She flushes at that, like he’d just called her beautiful.

He settles in with his notebook of graph paper and works on a sketch from last winter, calculating weights and forces, listing parts, and edging it closer to physical reality. Nat works on writing code, her laptop screen multicolored text on a black background while the television plays a marathon of some show profiling athletes overcoming adversity. She says she’s not into sports, and he can see the narrative is what she enjoys.

He looks up to ask her if she’d like another brownie, and sees she’s fallen asleep in the chair, laptop screen completely black. He thinks of her television flickering at strange hours and he wonders how often this happens. 

He gathers up his tools, wraps up the brownies and puts them in her fridge, puts the kitchen in order and looks for a blanket to drape over her. There’d been a throw on her bed. He sets her computer on the other chair and tucks the throw around her. 

He’s tempted to linger, but doesn’t want to wake her up, make her uncomfortable. He turns off most of the stand lamp and he locks the door behind him.

~*~

“Invite her,” Angie says, handing over a box of produce. Hidden under a big sheaf of spinach is a handful of long green beans and an army of small zucchinis.

“There’s a disturbing number of zukes here, Ang.”

“Sorry,” she says. “The squash is rabid this year. I can’t give it away fast enough and we’re already eating as many blossoms as we can find. It sent a tendril into last year’s compost and I think it’s gained sentience. As I was saying, invite her. We might need her help to defeat Squashzilla.”

Bruce has refused for years to attend town council meetings, but he caved a while ago and agreed to join the arts collective. Their summer Artists and Fuckups party is this coming weekend. He’s donating a case of Prosecco he scored on the cheap.

“Think her boyfriend’s finally coming in to town,” he says, and he can hear the edge of riled, even though he has no right. It feels indecent, this thread of jealousy.

“Then invite them both. Honestly, I like her. She’s whip smart and she’s not afraid of Peg, and that alone is hours of entertainment for me.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Angie dances her eyebrows up and down.

“Stop, just stop. We’re friends.”

She looks at him, shrewd and assessing, another woman peeling off his skin and finding him lacking, and he looks at his hands to make them stop clenching each other, but Angie continues kindly, “It’s good to have new friends.”

He nods, makes himself meet her eyes with a kind expression instead of wariness, instead of annoyance or anger. She gives him a break, changes the subject.

“You sure you won’t take Carol up on her offer, take over the science slot at the high school? She loved the plug and play physics curriculum you put together after their last two newbies flaked, she’s pretty sure she could swing your certification while you teach.”

That bit of pinch hitting had struck in the dead of last winter, and completing it had been less like pulling teeth and more like dislodging a wisdom tooth that had rooted deep into the brain using a loose set of pliers. And that was just writing lesson plans for someone else to follow. Bruce shakes his head. “I don’t think so. I was a shit teacher the first go around, and those were grad students. They chose to be there. I don’t want to fuck up young minds who don’t have any other option.”

“Bruce,” she says softly. “You wouldn’t. It might be…”

“I just don’t think it’s a good idea,” he says, hefting the box and walking back toward his truck. “But thanks for the veggies. And I’ll invite them to the party. We should show off our best assets to the new folks, right?”

~*~

Nat doesn’t recognize the number, but it’s a local area code, so she answers with her customary, “Romanoff.”

What Bruce says instead of any kind of greeting is, "The Skype stopped working after the upgrade."

She likes that he’s not a small talker on the phone. She’s always felt the phone is for terse information exchange, while real talking happens when you can see the person and really hear the shades in their voice. "You know, I wrote code that hacked financial and government systems, created revolutionary algorithms, built a company worth fuck-you money, even worked with incipient AI. But I'm not tech support, I don’t have the temperament. Besides, rumor is you have a doctorate."

"Can you fix it smart ass, or do I have to call my fifteen year old and beg?"

“This fifteen year old, is that your kid or your laptop?”

“It’s a Starkpad, Nat. I make dinosaurs, I’m not actually one myself.”

"Next time you upgrade, you should ask Tony Stark himself for instructions. He’s more of a people person than I am."

He laughs, "Thank you, Nat."

“What’s my reward?”

There’s a long pause, and she hears him opening the refrigerator.

“Zucchini, zucchini and more zucchini?”

“I have falafel and greek yogurt and tahini.”

“...and?”

“I’m naming my reward: I don’t want to have to figure out what to do with any of these things.”

~*~

“I’m going away for a few days, but I’ll be back by Friday,” Bruce says, watching her dig in the patchy little garden on the road side of the house. “It’s probably too late to salvage any of that for this year...”

She doesn’t have gloves, so he leaves in the middle of the sentence and comes back with a pair from a drawer in his workshop.

She rocks back on her heels and stands up, rinsing her hands from the hose and taking the gloves. There’s little breeze today, the air swampy with humidity. There are droplets of sweat beaded on the bridge of her nose, darkening her t-shirt in spots where it lays against the band of her bra. “The table gets here tomorrow. I was thinking…” and she swallows, stops the train of thought, puts on the gloves, takes them back off. “You’ll see it when you get back. Business?”

He shakes his head. “My ex is getting married at the end of the summer. She thought it might be good if I came down, spent a couple of days with David, put his mind at ease. It’s a good idea, but I also promised Angie I’ll be back in time for the party.”

“Putting his mind at ease?" She puts one of the gloves on again, stretching her fingers into them, adjusting the cuff, a more nervous gesture than he usually sees in her.

"He’s a good kid, but he worries. Normally he'd spend most of the summer here, but he wants to be part of the action with the wedding, can't blame him, but now it's been awhile since he's checked on dad, and…”. Bruce rolls his shoulders and shoves away the reflexive flash of memory, of feeling bone dry and desperate, ill equipped for this needy sensitive baby, so different from his older girl, so like him it made him sick to think of his parents caring for a child like that. For the first time, his relief that they were gone felt unselfish, but that didn't change the fact he only had examples of what not to do. David had always picked up on that, and been careful and concerned right back, which only made it worse.

Nat's wearing David's work gloves and a similar expression of concern as they look at each other, not sure where they stand, what to do.

“We’re coming to the party,” she says, pulling a glove off again.

He smiles at her, feeling it go lopsided, and then brushes his fingers against her wrist. “Take care of yourself while I’m gone.”

“Been looking after myself for a long time, doc,” she says, rolling her eyes, but he can tell it’s for show.

“There’s a bunch of zucchini bread in the workshop freezer. If you get hungry.”

She steps closer, and puts her cool bare hand on his neck, thumb sliding along his cheekbone, and he feels his cheeks flush.

“Nat,” he says softly.

She gets closer, and he gives in and puts his arms around her. Holds on, feeling the hot, soft weight of her, the scent of earth and her hair, the span of his hand across her ribs, t-shirt damp with sweat and he wants to feel his hands glide along bare skin, taste that salt. He takes a deep slow breath and methodically shoves those thoughts down.

She brushes her mouth against his jaw, a glancing touch, and then steps back.

“Safe travels,” she says, “and come back with your party shoes on.”


	3. Summer Break

CHAPTER 3 - Summer Break

“It’s pretty up here.” Steve hefts his backpack like he’s planning on making camp as they look out over the town. “Quiet.”

Natasha’s sweating like salted slug in this bright humidity, and while the hot press of them is maddening on her head, she’s still glad she wore the ball cap and sunglasses under the brutal cloudless sky.

“Do you even like to hike?” she asks, but lets it sound like a joke. He approached the haul up the dunes and through the woods south of the town like he did everything, with quiet seriousness and a big grin when they finished. She has to hop to hook the zipper at the side of the pack that holds the water.

“You could have just asked,” he chides, kindly, leaning down for her to reach. They’re being excessively kind to each other; have been since he called to say he was renting a car in Grand Rapids and not to bother hauling out to get him, which was a relief since he barely fits in the Probe.

He barely fits in the beach house, even though he usually fits in everywhere. Somehow, the lack of furniture makes it feel more crowded when he’s standing there, looking around like he still doesn’t understand what she’s doing.

The only things he’d really liked were the kitchen table with it’s stencil and shellacked top, chairs the same sandy pale green as the stencil, with the welded chickens roosting in the center, and a big mess of brambles and wild flowers in a squat flowing glass vase like a dollop of lava. And her bed, which was new since she’d left him the one they’d shared in San Francisco. She didn’t tell him how often she slept in the lawn chair, how much yoga she’d been doing to work out those kinks. She was afraid he’d take it as a compliment, that she didn’t like to sleep without him, but the truth was she was still getting used to having a whole room with only her bed in it, the luxury of having it separate from her living room, her office, her kitchen.

Her issues with the furniture have been less about lack of interest than a lack of knowing how to start, or where. Maybe just wallowing in so much undefined space that was hers alone.

Steve had given her this confused and concerned look at the lawn chairs in the living room, and she’d explained that the couch was coming. Which meant she’d had to surreptitiously order a couch for special delivery so she wouldn’t be lying.

They stand in her kitchen as she makes coffee. Her windows are closed, even though Bruce is still out of town.

“I’ve got some interviews, in Chicago and Grand Rapids. Plenty of law firms want to talk to me.” Steve’s not bragging, just thinking it through. “I’ve been considering going back to criminal law, working for the public defender’s office. Sometimes I miss fighting about people instead of policy.”

Nat takes his hand because she wants his future to be everything that he deserves, even if she's not sure where or if she sees herself in it. She’s maybe not the only one who’s been too busy to really think about what she wants.

“James would have been really proud of you, Rogers,” she says, and he kisses the top of her head, wraps his arms around her from behind, and she holds on to his wrists, wonders why she both craves this embrace, and is counting the seconds until she can move out of it.

"And he'd have wondered what the hell you're doing out here away from everyone you love."

"I'm tech support," she says. "I'm making art."

She stops because the truth is half-baked and it sounds flip, and she vowed a long time ago to give Steve better than flip.

"I'm figuring out what I want, Steve. What I need."

~*~

Bruce is easing the 4Runner along the gravel driveway when he spies them. Nat’s in front of her house, hair tied back with a scarf a la Peggy but her arms crossed tense and severe, and if he’d been on the receiving end of that look he’d probably have turned around the way he came.

But she sees him parking, and instead of yelling at him her face breaks open, not so much a smile as a kind of ease, and he feels hot want pierce him, catching his breath with unexpected intensity.

She holds up her hand like she doesn’t want to startle him, and then he sees broad shoulders and a couch, and she yells, “Goddammit Rogers, I told you to let me help.”

A mean amusement at her annoyance helps him bank the ache. Bruce gets out of the truck. “Need help?”

“Thought I had it. Or at least, was giving it.”

In person, the boyfriend is even more impressive, with a wide genuine knock you on your ass kind of smile.

Bruce takes the opposite end of the couch. 

“Nat didn’t measure the opening, and the delivery guys were reluctant to take the door off the hinges, so I was going to try to bring it in through the side.”

“Sand will be tough footing, but the door wall’s the way to go, might not even need to take it off the track.” Bruce says, “Let’s take it around deck side.”

They work easily together, maneuvering the couch through the trees in her yard to the back deck, until they get it into the living room, with Nat giving pointed directions in a clipped tone. Steve picks up the lawn chairs and hauls them back out to the beach front.

“You’re the sculptor,” he says over his shoulder at Bruce. “Hi.”

Nat looks at the couch, puts her hands on her hips, looks out at Steve. The piece is fine but it’s not exceptional, and Bruce gives it a puzzled look.

“I did what I had to do,” she says, deadpan.

~*~

It's the fact that Steve talks as if Grand Rapids is the same kind of option as Chicago that kicks Nat into gear. She can't let him be led astray by mirage. “Chicago could be a stepping stone into politics, though honestly, you could do that as easily where you're at. Michigan would be for me, and…”

Steve gives her a studied patient look, not pointing out that Chicago would also be for her, a bid to elicit compromise and at least lure her to a major city if she's still set on the Midwest.

She looks out the picture window, which actually looks like a picture, thinking that this whole negotiation is a non starter. This is hers, the deck that could use a refinishing, the line of milkweed and dogwood scrub at the edge of her yard alive with chipmunks and toads, the strange rapport she's developed with her wizened grocer Bob and his hippy handyman brother Jim, who’s emailed her a quote on the deck job.

“Nat,” Steve lifts his hip to dig a folded piece of paper from his back pocket, “how tied to this place can you be after a few months, when you had nothing to sit on in here until I showed up?”

She doesn't need to see the paper to know the order date gave her away.

“That's not…” she knows she owes him the explanation, and it's an easier topic to tackle first. “I had this idea of finding the right one for this place, but honestly that's an overly romantic idea about a sofa, so I just knuckled down and ordered something.”

He looks around the place, leans forward and wipes his palms on his jeans. “It's not the right one, is it?”

She shakes her head, knowing how perceptive he is and both hoping and dreading that he senses they aren’t really talking about the sofa.

He blinks slow, sweep of those long straight lashes like an indictment. “Then you should return it.”

~*~

There are fairy lights strung over the dock when Bruce gets there, twinkling in the gloaming, and it's goofy and kind of magical, and it seems like folks are well into Angie’s dark rum fortified Vernors punch.

Peggy hands him a glass as he ducks under a strand of lights, making a run for it. She’s got on a sailor top, high-waisted trousers, very red lipstick and very high heels.

“You’re quite a sight,” he says, kissing the cheek she presents him.

“Got an image to maintain,” she says, then narrows her eyes a little. “How was your trip?”

He raises a shoulder in a half-shrug. “Later,” he says. “We’ll catch up. But I’ve got a new commission if the dragon really does what we think it can, so that’s good. Just not sure I can get everything done before it snows, you know?”

“Global warming, darling, the cold might not set in until December.”

“Still gets dark at five then, Peg, and that’s really the issue.”

“I know.”

Bruce likes that Peggy empathizes without wanting to fix or solve him. Even Angie pushes, gives him links to articles on Vitamin D and light therapy, while Peggy has always taken the stance that Bruce is of course doing all he can to ameliorate his condition, and so he is of course the expert on Bruce. And sometimes, that’s even true.

“Do let me know if you feel up to using some indoor workspace after all. I can clear out a corner of the shop.” She shifts the subject with a wave toward the dock, “Nat and Steve are already here. He’s a charmer.”

He really is that. All reports confirm Bruce’s initial read that Steve’s a genuinely decent guy who puts everyone at ease, despite his shoulders offering seating for a family of four. People really like him.

Except for Nat, who exhibits a pained fondness when she looks up at her very own Adonis, like he represents a fork in her road when she really wants a spoon.

~*~

She’s sipping Prosecco and watching Steve dance with everyone, including Phil leading him through a slow salsa. Bruce has his feet up on a tree stump of a coffee table, champagne glass loose in his fingers.

He looks up at her, and the light from the bonfire catches in his dark eyes.

“Pretty dress,” he says. “Pretty girl. Pretty night. What are you doing just watching?”

“Could say the same thing about you,” she says, moves to the edge of his chair, and the back of her fingers brush against his cheek. He’d shaved for the party, hair had even started out in some semblance of order, good shirt open at the throat, tucked into linen pants. Now, he’s sort of reverted to form, a little rumpled, a little looser on the outside, still coiled tight and watching, like she wouldn’t know. Like she took all that casual cheer for granted, read it as true ease.

His eyes flutter shut, just for a heartbeat, at her touch. He briefly tangles his fingers with hers, turns to press them to his lips so quickly that she could have imagined it, so sweet that she feels the ache in her body radiate all the way through her.

The band is really swinging, and Steve dips Peggy, earning a delighted laugh.

“You should go get your dance,” Bruce says.

“I was thinking of letting Phil take another spin.”

~*~

They’re having a leisurely, late breakfast at the diner, easy enough to talk about Clint’s deployment and Maria’s new job heading up Stark Industry security, Sharon’s career efforts. Steve’s plane leaves that night, and she wants to enjoy the time they have left.

“If the NSA doesn’t pan out, Sharon wants to buy a coffee shop.”

“Really? Sharon doesn’t actually like people.”

“I think she likes the idea of liking people. At least people who are caffeinated. I tried to point out that they come in the door caffeine-deficient, but...Ultimately, I think she’d rebel at the inefficiency of the whole process.”

Peggy comes in to pick up a box of sandwiches and stops by the table, “Thank you for coming to our little soiree. Did you have a good time last night?” she asks Steve.

He gives her his thousand watt smile. “Yeah, it was great. Nat told me it was a fundraiser. Hope you met your goal.”

Peggy offers a throaty laugh. “We did fine. We raised more than we spent, and generated a lot of interest and goodwill. That’s always a perk. I don’t want to interrupt your breakfast, just thank you for coming.”

When she leaves, he looks around. There’s a lot of people recovering from last night. “I guess I get it, at least for the summer. These are nice people--doing weird shit, but hey, it’s cool to follow your groove, I guess.”

“You’re killing me with the hip talk, Rogers.”

He smirks at her, but pushes his point. “So what do you get out of this, Nat? What’s the point of wanting to be here?”

Natasha sips at her cup, buying time, trying to come up with an answer that’s fair to all of them. It’s more than the idea of no one wanting anything from her, the utter leisure to make her own decisions in her own time and in her own way, to have a world of possibilities and explore where she might fit within them. Sure, sometimes that feels more like drowning than swimming, but even that’s got something to recommend it.

She likes waking up early, doing yoga, working on this strange, esoteric, kind of pointless project with this esoteric, kind of strange, compelling guy next door.

She likes the people in this town, with their barter economy and support structure, and their total willingness to jack up prices for the summer tourists, to exploit the desire for handcrafted while actually crafting beauty and art, and yes, some weird shit.

“I like what they’re doing here. I like what I’m doing.”

“At some point, you’re going to want the next thing. A project, a business, a cause.”

“Maybe.” She shrugs. “I want to figure it out, and this is a good place to do that.”

They finish up, and she takes him over to the Gilded Lily to buy a vase for Sharon and to watch Steve blush at the Venetian glass hand-blown dildoes.

“Nat!” Lily is effusive, all bright energy in a lanky frame, lean muscle from working molten glass. Her blonde hair is loose, but the edges around her face are always singed. “I have a beautiful bud vase put aside because I liked it so much and didn’t want it to go home to some McMansion in Waukegun to get broken by the family cat. It’s yours if you want it.”

Lily brings the cobalt blue vase over to the side display case, where the dildoes are laid out on swaths of velvet to set off their swirls of color and fantastic shapes. While tucked away in a corner of the little shop, Nat knows that this is the bulk of their mail order business, which along with Gilda's Cavalry Accounting, keeps them afloat between tourist seasons.

It takes Steve a moment to realize what he’s seeing, but his flushed cheeks are worth the wait. 

Lily seems to agree, and asks Nat casually if she’s interested in the other merchandise for herself or her friend. She points out a confection with a loop handle and interesting bumps, fine green swirls running through it like webbing, like the twists inside a cat's eye marble. “That’s bottle green, from beach glass I gathered last year.”

Nat strokes her chin thoughtfully for Lily’s benefit, but it’s not an unappealing thought, if only for the blushing. Steve becomes very interested in the tree ornaments in the opposite corner.

“Tell Bruce I'm done with the eyes,” Lily calls out as they’re leaving. “I almost forgot. He can grab ‘em the next time he’s in town for the market.”

Steve takes her hand as they walk past the gallery that’s featuring a light installation that neither of them can really figure out, gold wire and ropes of LEDs twisted into a gnarled expanse of tree, nine different kinds of leaves dangling from it that look crocheted from fine spun copper. “I get it, Nat, I really do. It’s just...it’s hard to think about what’s next when you don’t seem like you’re even interested in next.”

The thing he is, he knows her so well, and he knows that he's right; he's just wrong about what she's going to do about it. There’s something very bittersweet in holding his hand in the sunshine and figuring out the words to tell him so.

But the decision calms her as well, letting go of the wavering back and forth she’d been doing, the avoidance of the truths unfolding around her. The money was always the driving point, the security it promised, but now that pressure has disappeared and she's digging underneath to find out what the hell she might want out of life now that she finally feels...safe. No longer precarious, ready to go to ground.

She’s not sure what she wants from her future, but she’s pretty sure what she wants right now.

That evening the weather turns humid and sticky, so she closes up the house and turns on the air conditioning. They sit at the kitchen table because Steve thinks she's going to return the sofa, and her lawn chairs are still on the deck.

Nat tries to find the space between honesty and cruelty, since she's always either been left, or had to kick the guy to the curb hard so he wouldn't come back. She fails, or maybe it always feels like failure when you're the one that person doesn't need, or will do better without, when you're the one who's making it a bad fit. She doesn't say that the lawn chairs are only biding their time on the deck until he leaves, or that the fractures between them were already there in San Francisco, just plastered over with shared history and career focus.

She times it so they can talk it out, or grab something to eat, but he chooses to hit the airport early. She wants reassurance that he's okay, and has to keep reminding herself that she's placed herself outside that circle, that of course she's hurt him, just less than she would have if she hadn't cut him loose.

Nat wrestles the chairs back through the patio doors and shoves the couch along the back wall. She thinks maybe she’ll give it to Daisy. She should talk to Bruce, get his advice on how to properly enter the barter economy.

She runs a lukewarm tub and puts on music, lights low, bathroom door locked even though she's alone, and toward the end of a long crying jag in the near dark, she lets herself acknowledge that she's also mourning James.

And she’s angry at Clint, still overseas for another few months, and even when he's back home, there’s still the transition to civilian life, this time for good.

And she’s burned out from years of working eighty plus hours a week, trying to build something big enough, hers enough, that it couldn’t be taken away from her, always watching her back.

And maybe what she's doing here is just trying to shake off years of ignoring how tired and desperate she’s been.

Maybe here, in this quiet little house in a strange little community, she can finally see that she doesn’t have to run and fight anymore.

~*~

It’s seven-thirty in the morning, but she can tell from the open windows and the music that he’s up.

She heads over with a bottle of grapefruit juice and a vague idea of breakfast.

There are circles under his eyes like he hasn’t slept, but he smells warm and good. There’s bread in the oven, and the scent fills the house.

She hands him the juice. He raises an eyebrow.

“I manned up,” she says. “Told Steve it was over.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he sounds like he means it. They’re still standing in his doorway, and she wonders why. Normally he just opens it up, or maybe she just wanders in like a feral cat.

“Yeah,” she says, and it does hurt, losing that. Causing pain in someone she cares for. But… She puts her hand on his chest. His heat spreads out through her palm, the t-shirt barely muting it. “It’s not good, but at least I don’t have to feel guilty about this…”

She raises up on her toes, just enough, and kisses him. His lips are warm, and she feels the hesitation run through him, before he grips her waist, kisses her back.

~*~

Thing is, he does feel guilty about it, just a bit.

This is nothing new. There is always a background hum of guilt he’s more or less successfully tamping down. Bruce has come to accept that he moves through life with a certain amount of friction, throwing off sparks of guilt and self-reprimand like metal grinding. Shame is bad, that can spiral; loathing is worse, that’s downright poisonous. Guilt he’s learned to live alongside without feeding, just getting on with what he needs to do, and some of what he wants to do, and the uneasy meeting of the two will just occasionally grind at him.

He really wants her, lush mouth and faint spearmint from her toothpaste, clever hands drawing up his back and hooking over his shoulders underneath his rucked up shirt.

She’s both younger and more knocked around by life, and because of that he suspects she’s not even aware of how much she’s got locked down tight, but that’s okay, he’s not looking to touch any of that. That stuff’s superfluous to the proceedings here in his little foyer. That stuff’s sacred, and volatile. This is the warm weight of a woman leaning into his arms, brush of her belt buckle against his dick and a delicious sound of approval when she feels he’s hard. He likes her voice. He wants to hear if it sounds different in bed.

He’s not great at relationships, both too focused and too inconsistent, but he’s actually been pretty honest about that, and it’s not like she’s really in this town to stay. He gives her until winter, when the nor’easters out of Canada dump a whole lake’s worth of snow right at your front door. Then it’s somewhere warm, and maybe she comes back for a few summers until it peters out. The cold is always the kicker, and her car is a disaster for winter driving.

Wasn’t there a Shakespeare line about a hot January? He can’t quite recall it with her tongue behind his ear, but it amuses him that they’re beginning this and he’s already sketching out the demise. Good job there, Banner, now focus up. 

He starts walking backward, pulling her into the living room. He kind of wants to pick her up but that seems presumptuous, so he slides a hand up to cup a breast, heft in his palm, light trace of the nipple. She twitches like it’s ticklish and grabs his elbow to lever his hand, jutting her chest into it, so he gets a firm hold and kneads, not hard, but like he means it, and she moans in approval.

He smiles into her mouth.

She’s opened his jeans, eased the restriction, but is content to skim her fingers and blunt nails along the waistband of his shorts, shifting the fabric over his cock, teasing. He leads her to the couch and presses her down, creak of leather and the sound of her breathing and the faint tick of the oven. He knocks a pillow off onto the floor and kicks it between her feet to kneel on, hands on her thighs bracketing his waist as they kiss, and then he draws back to press his forehead to hers.

“Here’s the thing you need to know, about me, about the first go around,” he begins, “and I need to know now if it’s going to be a problem.”

Her eyes flick up from his mouth to meet his. “And that is?”

“It takes me a time or two to relax enough to come. To let go, I guess. I’ve been told it’s a control thing, I don’t know, maybe. But it’s just not going to happen, and I’ve learned to roll with that until it just does. I need to know if you’re okay like that.”

“We can just fool around, until you’re comfortable.”

He darts in and licks into her mouth, dirty as anything, sliding her hips to the edge of the couch with a groan of the leather, until she’s started rocking and looking for friction, then he nuzzles back to her ear as she catches her breath. “I’m plenty comfortable. And you can touch me all you want, just don’t get goal focused.”

“Yeah, okay. Take the shirt off.”

He thinks sometimes that Bets was right and that quirk really is about control after all. If so, it’s still complicated, not what it seems on the surface. But the thing is, he’d always been wired that way and yeah, he could grit and grind and make it happen anyway, he had as a teenager, he’d even done that with Bets the first time. But fuck it, he was too old for that. He’d rather relax into the groove and save the fight for shit that mattered, like getting through the winter and keeping his thoughts on a good track.

And there was something to be said for giving oneself over as a toy for another’s pleasure. It really separated the girls from the women. He’s not surprised that Nat’s a woman who can handle driving, her eyes dilated dark as they work together to lay her bare, afghan spread between her skin and the leather.

He likes that she tells him what she wants, that she’s unabashed and occasionally loud, one leg draped imperiously over the arm of the couch and the other down his back, twitchy. 

His nose is filled with the scent of her, and just a hint of baking bread when he finally comes up for air. 

She pulls him up next to her, kissing and rolling against him, blissed out and luxuriating. She fondles him without working him, without pushing him, and then she slides down and settles in comfortable on her belly between his thighs, arms across his hips and her knees bent so her feet slowly sway through the air in rhythm with her plump mouth. She sucks him for a long leisurely time like he’s delectable. 

The moment he thinks, this might even happen, he shoves that temptation away and coaxes her back up, where she combs her fingers across his chest as he shivers and settles back down. Perfection is the enemy of the good, asshole, live that truth. The oven timer dings like he’s given the correct answer.

Now she’s wearing one of his shirts like a shift, sitting at his kitchen table staring at the loaf he won’t let her cut into yet. The crumb has set, it’s the first one he did before dawn, he’s just in a savoring mood and maybe he is testing her a little, seeing what she’ll roll with, what she’ll balk at.

She looks patient, skin still pinked, sipping at the tart juice she’d brought like some kind of apres-fuck refresher. Grapefruit, and not even ruby. He declines a glass. He can smell her in the scruff on his face, scent going mellow and sweet. He’s working butter and wildflower honey together with a fork, and he wonders if she’s the kind of person who naps.

~*~

Nat can't remember ever having bread fresh from the oven, certainly never licking honey-butter off the side of her wrist first thing in the morning, sipping coffee out of hand thrown mugs, looking over at the guy who’d just blown her circuits and wondering if it’d be uncouth to take his hand, suck the crumbs off his fingers or if that would seem like pushing. 

“Take it easy,” he says at her glance, with a laugh, slicing more bread. He lays it on her plate and reaches over to brush her chin, then leans in to kiss her like he can’t help himself, warm and a little sloppy. She digs her fingers into his hair and licks at the taste of the sweetened butter in his mouth, teeth against his bottom lip. She lets him go, dragging her fingernails over his thigh.

“I haven’t been swimming yet this summer,” she says. “I was thinking of going to the beach.”

He’s got this depth of calm, this ability to wait her out, that she really likes. He doesn’t point out that they live lakeside, he seems to know she’s looking for the day trip experience of the state park, dogs catching frisbees and gulls stealing burgers from the grill.

“Take the day,” she says. “Come with me.”

“If I’d had to guess,” he says, “I’d have pegged this conversation heading more towards spending the day in bed.”

“Yeah,” she says. “But I think I want to drag you away from temptation for awhile.”

~*~

They take her ridiculous Probe, which is a handspan off the ground and like lying down at seventy-plus miles an hour on the freeway, but is also not hers, turns out.

“It's my brother's, well, okay, we're not related _technically_ ,” it's a callback to their genius conversation, but her smile is even more complicated. The next bit is darkly humorous patter, rehearsed and meant to forestall further inquiry, “Clint's mom and my dad did a slow mo suicide pact; Bev choose prescriptions, dad preferred his chemicals with less paperwork.”

Bruce doesn’t chuckle, but he wants to. It’s designed to build and break the tension, let the listener know there are dragons past that point while absolving them of the obligation to express sympathy--so he doesn’t laugh, because his reaction isn't nervous pity, it’s recognition. He wants to, because he thinks, for all their problems and the ambiguity around the accident, at least his parents resolved their shit quickly. He doesn’t want to explain any of that on the way to the beach, sun glaring through the moonroof, so he just hums thoughtfully.

“It was just us for a few years, Clint finished high school and I finished elementary. Then Laura - now my sister in law - took us in, and modeled actual adult behaviour. I think she got a couple Girl Scout badges for it.”

The car is lovingly cared for but still over twenty years old, and she handles it with such a deep familiarity it makes him happy that he'd steered her toward his friends. He thinks no matter how short her stay, she'll take Peggy's chair with her.

“Clint went into the Army, career track, actually supposed to retire earlier this year but they talked him into an encore--every mile I put on this is Laura getting it back by taking it out on his baby.”

“So we're riding in someone else's marital argument?”

She shrugs, “I've spent the last twenty years waiting to hear he was killed, now it's yet another two months; some sand in the upholstery is the least I can do.”

~*~

Natasha sprawls on her belly, on a blanket anchored down at the corners by a cooler, a satchel of books and tablets, headphones, a 1:12 scale metal dragon jaw and sunscreen.

They’re a little away from the hordes, the beach busy even on a Thursday morning because it’s high season, sunny and perfect and the lake laps at the bright sand like an invitation.

His hands on her back rubbing in sunscreen are confident, the same way they had been earlier that morning, so sure and warm, like she’s one of his projects.

That’s just fine with her. She’s surprisingly willing to put herself in his hands, because he’s still letting her steer, her body moving with him like when they’d pressed close on the bike. Easy, extraordinary, want buzzing through her spine with both anticipation and gratification.

She’d hauled them out here because she doubted her own patience, thought some time teasing each other in the summer sunshine would be a good test. Normally, she’s as self-contained as they come, but he’s so...tempting, tightly strung on the inside - twanging with control overlaid with this cultivated, loose, messy ease on the outside.

She even likes the way he keeps nudging her to figure out what she wants, like it’s okay that she doesn’t know yet, but it’s important that she take the time and get it right.

“Don’t remember the last time I came to the beach. A few years ago maybe, when my kids were still willing to be entertained easily, hang out playing with random kids in the sand. Maybe we came last summer when David was here.” His thumbs move slow between her shoulder blades and his voice goes soft with thought. “No, year before. Last year he just hung around town, drew a lot, did a few projects at Phil’s shop. Same thing at Christmas and spring break.”

“It’s a younger scene, can’t blame him.”

“Hmmm.”

“Could be worse.” She feels like she’s melting into the blanket, soaking through into the sand, and maybe it’s the unwinding sleepiness that loosens her mouth. “Fifteen I was running four different credit scams and skimming from a major hedge fund...small time stuff, really should have stuck with that, would’ve qualified for student loans when I got to college, but with the record…on the other hand I had a good idea of who to hit up for capital a few years down the road...”

He chuckles so softly she thinks maybe she wasn’t meant to hear.

~*~

His hand is on her thigh, high up under the sundress but idle, like maybe he’s napping, maybe just gazing out the window. She’s consumed by the span of his fingers, how fucking close they are to the damp heat between her legs, and how maybe she can just will him to move his hand. Doesn’t matter if they crash, if she breaks the car, she just needs… Fuck it.

Nat pulls over, and she thinks maybe he was asleep after all because he sits up quickly, dazed when she drives over the gravel and pulls the car into some brush. He’s still blinking when she unbuckles the seatbelt and climbs over the gearshift onto his lap.

He gets with the program quickly, sleepy or not. His hands are on her ass, mouth on her neck, and he mutters in this delectable, delighted way, “Sand’s gonna be the least of your problems,” before her tongue is down his throat, and she’s ruching his shirt up from the back. 

She gets the shirt halfway over his head, but he doesn’t want to let go, and she wriggles in further, a sinuous twist against his cock until he relents with a moan and lets her strip him. She takes advantage of the moment to push away from the seat, work her suit bottoms off with one hand, which is slow going until he says, “Let me help with that.”

She’s trying to undo his zipper while he bares her, fingers grazing up and down the backs of her thighs, and finally, after a lot of knocking knees and elbows and squeaky upholstery, she’s got his dick in her hand and she’s sliding it between the slick lips of her cunt.

He bites his lip, tries to keep his eyes locked with hers, and she smiles, puts her fingers on his cheek to kiss him as she lines him up and slowly takes him inside her. She wants to keep eye contact, but he’s thick and hot, the angle a little awkward, but full, intense, and her eyes flutter a little, closing as she meets his mouth.

“Fuck,” he says, “Nat, that’s…”

“Yeah,” she says, panting and breathing through the feeling, not wanting to move away from him, not really able to, penned in by the seat, rolling her hips and squeezing her muscles until they get the perfect angle and she can get a little bit of a rhythm, as lit by his hands on her back, as the feeling of him inside her because it’s warm, and breathless, and achingly good.

Her sandals are digging into his knees, sand everywhere, and he shifts down a little more in the seat so he can get to her clit, slipping his hand under her sundress and stroking her, thumb pressing and rotating. She takes his wrist to guide him because she wants to come, but she also wants to give him a little bit of a ride, a show, make him feel like the risk of public exposure is worth it, particularly if he’s not gonna get anything more than friction and lust from it.

She doesn’t know how that unlocks for him, but she wants to make him feel good regardless, make him feel some of this dangerous, delirious rush that’s overtaking her, and then he gets the perfect pressure and angle, and he licks at the join of her neck, then bites down, sharp and just hard enough and she gasps, shuddering around him.

He soothes the mark on her neck with his mouth, then his thumb, meeting her mouth with a lazy kiss as she continues to shift slightly. He’s still hard and he smiles against her mouth, lets her ride out the aftermath of her orgasm, but then gently nudges her to stop when she starts to warm up again. 

“You good?” he asks, and she just snorts a laugh into his neck.

“I’m good,” she says. “More than good.” They set themselves relatively to rights, enough for government work, and she climbs back into her seat.

“Wanna take this show back on the road, try this in a bed?”

“Kinky,” she says. “I like it.”


	4. Close the Circuit

Peggy has a Land Rover that’s almost as battered as Bruce’s 4Runner, but it reads as more shabby post-colonial chic than grocery getter. Might be Peggy’s accent. Angie’s riding shotgun, craned around the seat to talk to Nat with a leery look.

“I like baseball,” Nat reassures her. Bruce’s leg is pressed along the sweaty length of hers as he sprawls in the corner of the seat, conked out against the window from the moment he settled in.

“No, kid, I believe you.” Angie looks amused now. “Besides, the Whitecaps are fun. We go a couple of times a year, when Peg can get away. Used to take his kids along when they were younger. His oldest, Ellie, has a hell of an arm. She used to go out and throw fastballs at that tree behind the house when they were fighting.”

It’s an intimacy she’s not sure he’d have wanted to share, or if he had, he’d have turned it into a joke, something that reflected on his own flaws, not the rocky adolescence of a bright teenager.

"I remember that feeling," Nat says, although she thinks it was probably different. Her rebellion was an internal drive, a loathing of the world and its supreme indifference that she'd sharpened like a shiv.

"Don't we all," Angie says ruefully. Peggy guns up to the slow jeep in front of her, sporting canoes and Illinois plates, and passes on the right.

Bruce doesn’t wake until they park, and still looks a little dazed as the National Anthem plays and Nat sets her scorecard to rights.

"Laura is a rabid Cubs fan. When I was a kid, she taught me how to score so she wouldn't have to worry about what I was up to while she watched a game. I liked the precision, the way you could read the game in the numbers."

"And what were you up to?" He sips at his beer, raises an eyebrow.

"Trouble, mostly. Occasionally homework."

He doesn't follow up on that, instead says, "My dad," and then stops. "Baseball cliches," he waves a hand, and she pushes her knee against his.

After the game, Peggy gives a short tour of her favorite art installations in the city, which hosts a yearly international art competition.

Angie reaches around to poke Bruce in the leg, “I’m going to be disappointed again this year, aren’t I?”

“I did it a few times, that’s good enough, I don’t need to get distracted by it.”

“Like a child forced to eat broccoli.” Peggy pulls into the lot of what looks like a modest church complex made of brick, and looks at Nat via the rear view mirror.

Angie continues, “He won the 3-d juried prize, and yes, winners have to take a year off, but his work has evolved a great deal since then and he won’t bother to go back.”

Bruce clicks his seatbelt free and bails as soon as the Rover’s stopped.

Angie shakes her head and winks at Nat.

The church shaped building was apparently a funeral home, but is now a brewery and pub, the pulpit refashioned into the bar, the hymnal board listing the specials on tap. Natasha already plans to take her family there, given Clint’s love of irreverence and Laura’s love of hops. The conversation over dinner turns from baseball to tourists, and she notices Bruce goes quiet, like it’s not polite to talk about the well-heeled and the hip who bring money into the town when the sun shines. Or maybe it’s not polite to talk about them in front of her. She excuses herself to the ladies room, and pays the check while she’s at it.

When Peggy finds out, she gives Nat an assessing look. “You’re sneaky. I like that.”

“Enough to bump my chairs up in the queue?”

“If anything, she might knock ‘em down a few slots,” Angie giggles darkly, gesturing to Bruce, “give you another reason to stick around.”

~*~

He’s clearly keyed up by the time they get back after dark, Peggy dropping them off at the side of the road, in front of the patch of orange daylilies between their mailboxes. The night is stifling humid, crickets sawing away, and she can hear his breathing and smell the warmth of his skin.

He leads her into his house with a hot hand circling her wrist. They don’t speak.

The house is livable despite the being shut up all day, shaded by trees and thick drawn curtains to keep the sun out. His bedroom is even darker and cave cool, air conditioner chugging like a champ in the window, dark blue rumpled sheets, and folded at the foot of the bed a thin quilt, made of muslin and old sundresses by the patterns. He focuses on kissing her, savoring and thorough, as she take him down to bare skin. He lifts her dress over her head and drapes it over the footboard.

She lays him out on his bed, and goes over him like she’s trying to diagram his nerves, replicate his responses in code, the curve of muscle and joint, the silky swell of his cock angling against his belly, the flick of his lashes as he drives his head back into the pillow and, for once, takes what she wants to give.

He’s sitting curled against the headboard and already damp with sweat when she sits astride him, eyes wet and dark, and she thinks maybe her skin can taste his, the salt and hot satin of him.

He’s wound pretty far already, so she’s easing back on the stroke while he kneads and rolls one nipple and palms the middle of her back, working her own clit because she’s close and she wants to get there without pushing him past tolerance. He groans as she comes, pulling her flush to him and suckling at her neck as she gasps and grinds down hard on him.

She’s still dazed and shuddering as he braces her shoulders from the back and starts driving up into her, balls tight against her ass and headboard knocking against the wall as he uses it and his heels for leverage. She grabs a handful of his hair, and her other hand is still jammed between them, fingers rolling across her clit with every thrust. He’s breathing like a bellows, head twitching back and forth separate from the rhythm of his fucking, brow furrowed and jaw slung open, and she can feel everything ratcheting tighter until he stops breathing for a few thrusts and then he drives his chin down and his cock deep and freezes for a long moment as he begins to come.

Long shuddering breath, head rocking back, expression of pained bliss like an ecstatic saint.

Nat just keeps saying, “Oh...oh,” like she’s watching fireworks.

~*~

Nat keeps coming back to stand in her living room and watch the waves slamming into her beach. The rain has been only a patter so far, the storm clouds short circuiting dawn, but the drops are big and cold, and whatever’s hanging over the lake coming toward them is going to be rough. The horizon is gone, the sky the same dark slate as the water, so the churning waterline on her beach looks like the edge of a rolling void. She feels exposed, and reassures herself that she’s in a house with a 1940’s tile bathroom, it’s withstood this kind of thing before.

She changes into jeans and sneakers, and heads next door to see what Bruce gets up to when it’s inclement. The work yard is unswept but there’s only sand and leaves, so he’d wrapped up last night and never got to work this morning, but a light's on in the garage, the main door shut but the smaller one that faces the woods propped open with a chunk of log.

Ethelred is nearly complete except for a handful of scales, detailed and functional with her jaws open wide to shoot a gout of hissing flame, teeth jutting into the oncoming storm. Bruce has made her modular for shipping, and his agent may have already sold both it and a companion piece that is currently only a sketch and some code.

She knocks on the doorframe and pokes her head in.

“Ethel’s like electromagnetic candy. The garage and house both have rods and ground wires, but you’ll want to be on the mats before the lightning starts.”

She steps onto the thick rubber mats that cover the garage floor, and spots Bruce in the hammock. “Welcome to the Thunderdome?”

He pushes a foot against the workbench, setting the hammock swinging. “Step into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.”

She toes off her sneakers as he divests himself of his project, tossing onto the bench a mechanical pencil, graph notebook, small metal ruler and his battered Pocket Ref. The wind kicks up as they wrestle her into the hammock with him, elbows and knees, and it’s sweaty until the storm breaks and the temp drops.

~*~

They’re in her bed, which is in fact as lush as it looks. Comfortable, but not cushy, and the sheets smell like manufactured lavender, but clean. They remind him of his own youth, and the endless cycle of laundry when Ellie had been five, David a fussy, anxious infant.

He’s mostly naked, and she’s propped on his belly, fingers scratching his chest and he loves the play of muscle along her back, the focus of her gaze and sweep of her calf as she drums her foot against the edge of the bed.

It had taken them a solid week to get to a lazy afternoon in her bed, and weather so hot it was hard to imagine doing anything else. He’d been partway up a ladder, serrating the last few teeth when she’d pulled him away with sweaty hands underneath his shirt, kisses to the base of his spine, into cold water in her fancy shower and lolling on her cool sheets under the ceiling fan, staying damp, sticking together in this humid, drugging weather.

“Why don’t you have a grill? I've come to realize it's pretty standard equipment around here.”

He twists a piece of her hair around his finger, the brightness reminds him of the sheen of wings and scales. It’s been a long time since he's slept the whole night through.

“Ethelred,” he says. “I figured out some of the more delicate structures, but I didn’t have any 1/8th mm piping and I wanted to test it out immediately. So I took the grill apart. They weren’t permanent spokes, I had to redo them, but they let me see the structure I was after.”

He says it lightly, doesn’t mention that he couldn’t really help but follow the urge, that he knew in the moment he wasn’t going to be pleased with the sacrifice, but that’s one of his luxuries - following the idea at any cost, as long as he’s the only one affected. And maybe he’d been feeling a little bit lost without David to cook for that first week of summer, when he decided the grill was an acceptable loss. That was his prerogative.

She rolls over so that her head rests against the softness of his belly and he traces the sweep of her collarbones, peeking out from the tank top.

“Laura and the kids are coming up next weekend,” she says. “They wanna meet the dinosaur guy.”

“It’s your call, Nat.”

She doesn’t respond to that. “Angie said something about a play?”

He rolls a little so she’s more on his waist and he can angle in towards her, sliding up the tank top to access the curve of her hip bone with his mouth.

“Midsummer Night’s Dream. They do it every summer. Shakespeare on the lawn - lights, blankets, stumbling teenagers in fairy wings. It’s fun. I mean, it’s kind of terrible, but a little bit great as well. The kids get really into it. You can watch them transform.”

“She asked if I wanted to help finish up the set.”

“Ang likes you.”

She pauses. “It’s odd, being asked to do things I’m not good at. I feel like I should offer to rob a bank for her or something.”

Bruce laughs so hard she rolls off him and shoves him back onto the pillows. “I love it when you say stuff that from anyone else would be a joke.”

She grins. “I don’t do things like that anymore, but it's not like I’ve forgotten how. Ask Tony Stark about that.”

He shifts up to more of a sitting position, laugh dying, wondering how Tony suddenly got into this conversation. “Why would I ask Tony about you?”

“Um, he’s the guy who bought my company lock, stock and barrel. I thought you knew that, it’s why I joked about referring you to him for tech support, it’s my standard answer now.” She cocks her head, “Wait, Tony?”

Brilliant algorithms Tony had said, angles he hadn’t thought of, a couple patents. “You were the one he was ranting about, the buyout that became a personal grudge match.”

She draws up, and he can feel that sharp awareness click back into place. “MIT, wasn’t it. Small world.”

“If it’s any consolation, almost no one gets under his skin like that, he complained that he’d had to pay nearly full market value.”

“That was the whole point, actually.”

“So your work with incipient AI…?”

“I hacked into Jarvis, yes.” She concedes, “I won’t say it was the hardest thing I’ve done, but it was like wrestling a wet toddler out of a tub for four hours straight.”

She’s eased just a little, but her guard is still up and he’s eager to convince her he’s on her side. Really, anyone who can make Tony Stark froth at the mouth and walk away straight to the bank is indeed a genius. “So, is it true that afterward you signed Jarvis up for the panty of the month club?”

“He’s amazing,” Nat says with complete sobriety. “He deserves pretty things.”

~*~

The chair is gorgeous in her living room, and Peggy surveys the effect with a sense of satisfaction deep enough it seems to mellow the whole house. “You need a pair,” she teases.

Nat agrees. “No, you're right, I want a pair.”

“If you're serious, we're already working on orders for holiday season delivery… It may not be until the new year.”

Nat settles against the supple chestnut leather with a pleased sigh and a grin up at Peggy, “I'm not going anywhere.”

“Well then,” Peggy perches on the footrest and pulls a receipt pad and a keyring of leather swatches from a side pocket of her carpenters jeans. “It seems to me you're more of a complementary colours person, and not very tied to making things match.”

She says this with a thrum of approval, as if any fool can make like go together with like, but it takes real art and effort to make unlike things play along.

“I’m not afraid of making a hot mess of things, if that’s what you’re driving at.” Nat jostles her shoulder against Peggy’s and heads into the kitchen. “I’ve got ice water, iced tea, some white wine, I can make some coffee…”

“I’m going to be an ungrateful guest and ask if the tea is sun tea?” Peggy is crouching by the television cabinet, laying swatches against the wood and the glass knobs.

“I’m not sure how to make sun tea--”

“Oh, then I’ll have some of yours. Sun tea is wretched. You dump a few bags in a jar with water and stick it in the sun; it half brews, half ferments, and you get out of it exactly the effort you’ve put in.” Peggy unclips a selection of colors and makes her way through the room, looking at them in the shadows and in the sunbeam just edging onto the carpet by the patio doors. “And making a hot mess is half the fun of life, darling.”

Peggy comes into the kitchen and lays the swatches against Nat’s bare arm, a warm charcoal, a russet, a pale dandelion, a dark drawing room green. “I like all of those.”

“Yes, but do they like you?” She tucks the dandelion swatch into her pocket, wavers on the russet. She takes Nat by the wrist and pulls her into the patch of sun. Her eyes are shrewd, fan of wrinkles at the corners as she considers the charcoal and the green against both the tanned upside and the pale underside of Nat’s arm.

“What’s the other half?”

Peggy smiles, thumb smoothing the swatch of leather against Nat’s skin, the rich warm color making her look like butter and cream. “Making something that works.”

~*~

“One of the things I love about your work is that it’s big and awkward and hard to place. The very scale of it deters people who are lukewarm on sculpture. I’ve really expanded my contacts at big institutions, it drives growth.” It’s bright where Freida’s calling from, the sunlight making her hair golden. “But then it’s modular, it breaks down so small, installation is a dream compared to some heavy bronze casting.”

Bruce has the tablet propped against his knees as he lays on the couch, feet tangled with Nat's as she lays low, seemingly absorbed in ignoring her book to watch the storm. He’d rather be in the garage, enjoying the ozone scent on the wind and the brief break in the stifling humidity, but the wifi doesn’t reliably reach. “So that’s the first slice of bread…”

“I’m not building a shit sandwich. I’m just making sure you understand where I’m coming from that this is not a huge deal breaker for us, I think we’re a good team. And you don’t have to take my suggestion, I can work around it if you give me advance warning. But you took a commission for a static piece based on initial drawings last February, and they’re really not keen on the whole animatronic angle--”

“You make it sound like Chuck E Cheese--”

“I know it’s not. That thing looks alive, Bruce. Romanoff doesn’t just code, she’s got a gift. I think she could draw a face on her hand and break my heart with it.”

He nods, giving her the eye briefly as Freida turns to sip from a cup.

“And I can find people excited about whatever you two collaborate on in the future. But Ethelred as originally promised is spoken for.”

Bruce wipes his hands down his face. “Fine.” He’s decided to make a replacement head, based on the previous iterations of plans, and just keep the one they’ve put so much work into. “Give me a week, we can do installation then.”

He wraps up the call and sets his tablet on the massive coffee table. Nat gives him a moment to regroup and meet her eyes.

“Hey, when it clears up,” she stretches a leg out to wriggle toes against his side, “let’s go behead a dragon.”

Bruce teases, “Couple stuff,” and there's a spasm of something in his chest when her toes pause, and he's trying to figure out if what he regrets is the joke or the dismissive tone he'd said it in. He stretches his own leg along hers, reassurance of touch smoothing it over, and maybe that's the answer.

Nat lets a slow smirk bloom on her face, “Why not?”

That's a wrinkle.

~*~

Phil’s concession to the heat is to roll his shirtsleeves up and drive with the windows down in the van. In the back is a cover for Nat’s kitchen table, a work surface for when she or Bruce are soldering, to keep the stencil and shellac pristine.

Nat thinks she’s not really going to get the hang of working in the little spare room that’s supposed to be her office, so she’s swimming with the current instead. Daisy had suggested framing a section of old frosted glass shower door, smooth on the working side, the wooden lip anchoring it on the table and catching any pens or screws that might roll. It’s simple, and functional, but the texture on the glass looks like clouds, and she cut and assembled everything herself.

“Drijfhout means driftwood, you know.” Phil muses, as Nat picks latex paint from her cuticles. “And unlike most small towns, that’s actually how we get most of our residents. It’s like joining the circus.”

She’s come to realize that for all his surface banality, Phil is just as much a thinker, just as much an idealist. Maybe a little more mercenary than, say, Peggy, but then maybe not. Nat suspects she hasn’t met the steel underneath Peggy’s charm yet. She thinks Bruce likes the woman so much because they’re both big cats who keep their claws retracted.

“Are you implying I’ve run away to join the circus?”

Phil smiles like it’s a joke, but also like it’s funny because it’s true. “People come here because it's drop dead beautiful, the woods, the lakeshore, the majestic dunes. Some people also find art here, it's been a colony for it since before the first world war. The town council has roots in turn of the last century utopian socialism--a ruthlessly practical version of it, but it fosters a sense of teamwork within the group, a high tolerance for weirdness if it’s also kind of useful. We’re a closed community with an open mind, let’s say.”

“I get that I’m at outsider, more or less summerfolk,” Nat says, “I’m not offended by it.”

“What I’m saying is,” Phil backs into her drive just as smoothly as he drives forward, then shuts off the van and turns to her, earnest and assessing. “Every once in awhile--and it's usually a good thing even when it's a tough thing--someone comes here and art finds _them_.”

~*~

It's the shrieking that gets Bruce’s attention, followed by Nat's voice in a loud no-nonsense tone. He looks out the kitchen window, where he can see some of her deck. Nat's got a kid on her hip, somewhere close to a year with fuzzy brown wisps of hair stirring in the breeze, and there's a dark haired woman sprawled out on the lawn chair.

"Not even a pinky toe in that water without me or your mom: do you understand?" Her aside to the woman about rip currents is mostly drowned out by the children's high pitched giggling and half-hearted agreements. "I'm not kidding. The sand is fair game up to the shore, but the water is off-limits unless there's a grownup."

She extracts promises, and then two sunny haired kids tear down from the deck into the marram grass edging the beach.

The family has clearly arrived. There hasn't been a consensus on introductions, and he's happy to let her call her comfort level, but he decides to work in his garage anyway to not push it.

A few hours later his phone rings.

"Did you eat lunch yet?" There's dry amusement in her voice, and he realizes that it's almost two.

"No but--"

"Come over. It's just soup and sandwiches, and the kids’ll stay still for all of thirty seconds, but you can meet Laura."

It sounds like she's improvising, but it's a decision, and he'll go with it.

He changes his shirt, feels like an asshole who's trying too hard, and changes it back to what he was wearing, ignoring the hole in the bottom from the soldering iron. He's halfway through the underbrush when he changes his mind again, goes back and puts on the nicer shirt. Might as well err on the side of making an effort.

Laura is small with a huge, wicked smile, sitting at the kitchen table watching Nat with wry and open affection.

He shakes her hand, and asks if he can help.

"I got it," Nat says over her shoulder and winks at him. "Oven grilled cheese and heating up that tomato soup.” She explains for Laura, “Bob's early tomatoes went wild, so he had soup by the gallon yesterday. He's the one with walrus moustache.”

"Amazing," Laura says. "The benefits of hippyville - no offense." Bruce holds up his hands and smiles gently. "But look at you, working the oven. Another skill for your Scared Straight Scrapbook.”

"Recipes," Nat only shrugs, and it's the teasing of close siblings. "The Google is full of them."

"Crazytalk," Laura says. “You’re starting to scare me.”

"She doesn't cook either," Nat explains as she laughs. He goes to lean next to her where she's stirring soup in an enameled stew pot she didn't have yesterday. She brushes her fingers under the waistband of his jeans, sly but not hidden.

Bruce raises an eyebrow.

"Nice shirt," she murmurs with a smirk.

"So what's for dinner?" He asks, fighting the temptation to tuck away the errant piece of hair curling in front of her eye.

"Smart ass. I've got plans."

"The diner?"

"It's a plan."

He glances at Laura and the woman’s got a shrewd set to her mouth as she looks at the kids playing on the deck, drinking iced tea like it's a job.

"Don't mind me," Laura says, and this is what brings colour to Nat’s cheeks.

The kids are unimpressed as they wolf down lunch, tearing back outside even as Laura sprays them down with more sunscreen.

"Come over tomorrow," Bruce says, lingering by the patio doors. "They can see the dragon, I'll feed you all."

Laura nods. "We'd love to."

Nat walks him out, halfway down the deck stairs and then catches his hand, his eye. "Later?" she asks, and there's a hint of a question like the decision is somehow in his hands.

He steps back up briefly, brushes her mouth, fingers fluttering along her cheek. "Yes."

~*~

Laura waits until the kids are in sleeping bags in the living room, Nate in his pack n' play. They head out onto the deck where they can hear crickets and waves lapping on the shore and the mishmash of soundscape and music Bruce listens to when he's working at night.

They haven't talked about Clint. Or the fact that his leave didn't pan out. Laura's mouth is tight, has been every time they've skyped since his retirement was postponed, and Nat thinks it's taking all her will to keep abiding, not howl at Clint, say fuck it. Maybe leave him.

Nat feels that possibility for the first time, a cold weight in her stomach.

Laura takes a long drink of the wine they've been working on and says, "I love my kids. I do. But I just..." She looks out at the waves. "I kind of hate you right now."

Nat laughs, keeping it light. She's spent enough time envying Laura's easy normality to understand that Laura is partly serious, and to be floored again by her ability to be so honest and yet still so gentle. Laura has always been a Grand Master of real human emotion, instead of the armor and feints that Natasha and Clint had learned to survive. "You've been taking care of people for a long time. Me included."

"He promised. And then I got pregnant again and I thought, 'well at least this time he'll be here for the shitty parts.' But so far, no, he isn't. And there's always the risk.”

Nat decided a long time ago that the only way to get through that fear was to shove it away. "He'll come home Laura." 

“Right. Then he can be the nest penguin for a change, and I can be the sea penguin.” Laura muses, "Sometimes I daydream about office politics. Joining the football pool. Paying for daycare. Or running off to join a hippy commune and fucking the hot neighbor--don't even try to pretend."

So she doesn't.

“I mean, god, Nat, he's not even my type, but it's been so long. We were done with babies, and then Clint left just about the time I was ready to go again.” Laura goes off on a tear about it, because it's an easier conversation, an easier frustration to vent. “I admit I have abused the sacred intent of the library story hour to rush home and just have some time alone.”

Natasha has nothing to offer, except maybe one thing. “Tomorrow, we're shopping for Christmas ornaments...”

Laura's look is withering.

“Trust me, I know some lovely ladies who can set you up, with something at least. It's a gesture, but it's what I've got. My treat.”

“Please tell me you're not buying me a happy ending.” Laura downs her wine. “I don't think I can say no to that at this point.”

She’s on the cusp of laughing when she sees that Laura’s showing her teeth in a grimace and not a smile, and there’s a stab of panic. Laura has been their rock, their first demonstration that love was something more than two stubborn people surviving, their sweet amazing Laura, pretty much since Nat was twelve. It’s not that Laura doesn’t break, it’s that she shouldn’t.

Clint, and also Natasha, have always considered themselves the people who do the dirty work for Laura. The first thing Nat had done when the money came through was fund the kids’ college through a trust, and put aside a retirement for Laura specifically, separate from Clint’s pension. She wonders if that went into his calculations for staying a little longer, padding it as much as possible, thinking that’s the most tangible thing he could give her.

Laura is watching the waves as tears roll down her cheeks. “I signed on for this, it’s something I chose as much as he did. I don’t regret that, not really. But I fucking miss him. And I’m afraid. Every day I think we’ve pushed our luck too damn far, and we keep pushing, and it’s going to snap, and I’ll never get to actually see him again.”

Nat clutches her wine, thinking that if she really knew how to be an adult, she would know what to do, what to say. She opens her mouth and forces the words past the raw knot in her throat, “I don’t know what to do.”

Laura laughs a little, thick and wet, and wipes her face with the tail of her cotton shirt. “Say something flip. It’ll cheer me up.”

“I’m trying not to be flip these days. I’m trying to be real.”

“That is a real part of you, both of you. It’s how you shove away the things that hurt, that confound you. Maybe I want you to shove this away a little for me.”

“Okay.” Nat hands over the balance of her glass of wine. “Tomorrow we’ll go to the Gilded Lily, let the kids pick out some sun catchers or tree ornaments, and you can browse the high-end glass dildoes and maybe shove it yourself.”

Laura raises her glass, “That’s my girl. Now pour another round with me and tuck me in before you go sneaking off next door.”

~*~

Bruce sets his tablet down, musing that he knows her well enough now that he can tell by the way she comes through the screen door, an extravagant sweep and pivot, that she's buzzed and strung tight.

"Door was open," she chides. "Anyone could have come in."

She lingers against the doorframe.

"Dangerous criminals," he says, "in sundresses and bare feet."

"I'm plenty dangerous, even barefoot," she says.

"Don't I know it."

She bares her teeth at him, a feral look, but as his mouth twitches it spreads into something sultry, wanting and needy and he swallows hard at all the things she's holding onto.

"C'mere."

She shakes her head. "You come here." 

He lets her sweat it for a moment, but her only concession is a throaty, "please.”

Bruce keeps eye contact as he gets up and walks over to her, drawing it out, enjoying the anticipation of making her wait just a little. He stops close enough to smell wine and sunscreen, the scent of her hair from a day in the sun. It makes him lightheaded, how good it is, how much he wants her. How much she wants him.

He rests his fingertips on her waist and noses along her jaw, behind her ear, along her soft cheek, so close to her mouth he can feel her breath catch as her patience runs out.

Then her hands are on him, the kiss desperate, cool lips, her tongue slicking against his and any thought of slow and sweet and teasing disappears as she moans and pulls him back towards the kitchen table, as he pushes his hips against hers and then turns her around so that she's pressed against it. He gathers her dress up to her waist, and flexes his hips, worn denim against thin cotton panties, mouth against her ear.

"You wanna talk about it?"

He truly doesn't want to push, but he wants to be clear that she has options, even with him. Even in this moment when want is sparking between them, heavy and thick and all-consuming.

He can feel her laughter rather than hear it, and something loosens a little as she arches against him. She reaches back, fingers tangling in his hair, turning to meet his mouth. She tastes like wine, and cold water, and herself, sweet and sharp and welcome.

"Later," she drawls, like she's taking in the option, savoring the possibility. "Right now, I just want this." 

She pulls her dress off over her head and he draws his mouth along her neck, down her spine, opening his belt and fly. She's not wearing a bra, so he bares her completely when he slips her panties down and rises up kissing the back of her knees, her thighs, the curve of her ass.

"Please," she says again, and he stands up, savoring the feel of her skin, the scent of her. She reaches back and grabs him by the belt, pulling him close as she slides one knee onto the table, taut stretch of thigh and then succulent heat in his hand and she groans in relief. He lingers there until she stops stroking him behind her back and stretches across the table, shoving most of the drawings away as her skin flushes pink and she bucks back.

He shucks his shirt and leans over her, one arm planted on a clean spot of table and the other coaxing her hip back to sink himself deep. She lays her cheek flat and snakes a hand toward her clit, and he eases them back a little not to crush her wrist against the table. His world narrows down to the smack of flesh and her harsh breathing, the rhythmic rustling of the papers, her bright hair spilling, and the edge of a drawing under the last two fingers of his braced hand.

Her scrawled marginalia outlines a rough pencil sketch he'd made of a lion with leathery wings, something for next summer, circuit diagrams tracing the bony struts like veins, her technical pen ink on his graph paper.

He glides his other hand up her spine and sweeps her hair from her face. Her eyes are squeezed shut and she's been close for a while, bearing down and easing up, maybe a little too much wine, and he knows what it's like to hang there, what you want just out of reach. He lays his chest light on her back and murmurs in her ear, “yeah,” and “come on,” and he scrapes her neck with his chin against the grain.

She lets out a whine like she's redlining and when he asks, “Should I bite you like the first time,” she nods and then goes off before he can.

Later in the dark of his bedroom, her head rests on his arm as his fingers drift over her, bodies spent and humming, in her case sobering softly. The pressure has eased, and he doesn't expect her to circle back to whatever drove her here, but she does, with a preliminary sigh.

"Clint's not regular army. He's got... special skills, special training. There's always a chance, when we don't hear from him...that things have gone wrong. And we’ll never know the details, just that he’s not coming back, and hopefully we get something to bury. I guess that was always true, it's just..."

He rolls a little towards her, listening. He can just make out the glint of her eyes.

"We keep testing Laura's ability to stick with us. It's more than she should have to take on. But she did it, keeps doing it, and I don't know what I'll do if Clint doesn't come home."

There's a confessional quality to her words, the sleepy worry you only admit when it's dark and safe, when you're not conjuring demons, just naming them.

"Love's not a test," he says. "And she loves you both, clearly. But yeah, it's gotta be hard."

The silence stretches, and then she rolls to press against him. 

"I like that you don't just say what you think I want to hear. It's... actually comforting."

He thinks that not a lot of people have comforted her if his poor talents feel like warmth, but he pulls her tighter and she kisses him, hands sliding down to stroke him, stoke that desire up between them again.


	5. Connecting the Dots

Lila is up when Nat comes in the back door at dawn, sitting at the kitchen table quietly constructing a detailed scene between the chicken, the rooster, and the half constructed mini Ethelred. 

“Hey, baby, you hungry?”

Lila shakes her head and hands over the rooster, “She's home sick, make her barf.”

Nat does, for nearly twenty minutes as the plotlines become more and more convoluted and descend into downright disturbing, a softer version of the disgusting one upmanship she and Clint would engage in. Laura’s right, neither of those two nuts have fallen far from the tree. 

She also works a little bit of prototyping in, thinking modular construction, speaker and programmable sounds, LEDs, modular coding, interaction between units; how she could make it a kit, make it a class, make it a project that a kid could get into the guts of and modify.

She makes the rooster fall over, all barfed out, and coaxes some cereal into Lila before taking her out into the sand and water.

~*~

The kids are tasting every one of the ice creams on offer at the coffee shop. They've technically had breakfast, so Nat's made the case to Laura that ice cream for lunch should be allowed even if it's blue.

Nat's slipping a bill into the tip jar when Daisy comes in on a coffee run, "Phil said you were trying to get rid of a couch?"

She sees an opportunity. "I have a couch. I want a grill. Think I can make that trade?”

Daisy cocks her head. "Maybe," she says slowly. “My sister Darcy knows someone who might have a spare.”

This is how she meets Darcy, who lives in a shabby walk up above a yarn shop with a textile anthropologist cum master weaver named Jane, and who's in some kind of business partnership with an LED installation artist called Thor. He's recently moved in above the shop, so they're culling all the duplicate housewares. Thor is huge and gracious and remarkably human despite being a trust fund kid. 

“Partially disowned,” Darcy stage whispers as Thor yanks the spare grill out of the shed, “weird bunch; he's better off with us, even with Jane out in Madison.”

“Long distance relationship?”

“Summer fellowship, I helped her apply for the grant.” Darcy locks the shed behind Thor and opens the back door of the shop to let him through. On their way, as Thor declaims about the brilliance of Jane's work in mathematical knitting, Darcy catches and smoothly restocks the balls and skeins of yarn he knocks off hooks and cubbies with the grill.

An older man sits in state in a conversation nook, working on an intricate piece in delicate silvery yarn that looks like he's knitting a spider web out of cigarette smoke. His smile is so infectious as he watches them troop through, it takes Nat a moment to catch that he wears a patch over one eye.

“Just breezing through, Nick, carry on.” Darcy waggles a rainbow skein but the man stows his project and rises to offer his hand.

“Nick Fury--"

“Rear Admiral!” Darcy calls from the front door she's holding open.

“Coast Guard, retired.” He gives her a man's handshake, firm and square.

“Natasha Romanoff.”

Darcy's “She doesn't knit, Nick,” is cut off by the tinkling of the shop door bell closing behind her.

Nick waves off this minor detail. “Peggy said you're in the Liebers’ old place. Did anyone let you know about the rip currents?”

“Actually, my neighbor did, yes.” Bruce had illustrated the powerful currents that can sweep a swimmer far out into the lake using his thumbs on her back. “I got life jackets for the kids, strict house rules about the water.” She adds, “Admiral.”

“Retired.” His eye glints, assessing, and Nat feels like maybe he's seeing past the easygoing veneer she puts on for new people. “You're a smart ass; nice. Call me Nick.”

“Nat.”

The door bell tinkles again and Laura begins to chuckle with an evil glee, “Oh, perfect.”

Nick dons a warm proprietorship as he shows Laura around and sets her up with a couple beginner's projects for Clint. They talk service and retirement and second and third careers while Nat takes the kids outside to talk details with Thor, meeting up that evening to deliver the grill.

Laura comes out patting a bag emblazoned The Tangled Web and says, “He's so worried about what to do in retirement, I'll find him something to do. So. Glass place?”

“Gilda is expecting you,” Nat indicates the shop down the block, shifting little Nate to her other hip. She calls Bruce while Cooper describes to his sister the fish skeleton he found that morning and Laura chats with Lily inside the shop.

It almost goes to voicemail but he finally answers, “Hey.”

"So the good news is that people are bringing things."

Bruce sounds dazed and a little distracted. "The bad news?"

"There's maybe a few more of us coming to dinner than originally planned."

“Oh...kay.”

~*~

Laura’s kicked back in the passenger seat, hair blowing and elbow propped so her hand glides through the wind. “I may have ratted you out to Knitting Nick.”

“How so?” Nat’s taking a twisty route back, scenic second growth woods and small crop fields and glimpses of the lake. The kids are dozey in the back except for Nate, who’s chewing pensively on a padded book about a dog who likes pizza.

“I may have told him the bar story.”

“Laura, these people seem to like me here, why would you tell them the bar story?”

“You saved my life, baby. Nick seemed like the kind of guy who’d appreciate the heroics of that.” Laura shoves the sunglasses back down over her eyes. “I don’t know. He wanted to pass along his thanks for Clint’s service, and for the sacrifices I’ve made as a military spouse, and maybe I’m fucking pissed he’s still even _in_ the military, so I changed the subject to the general badassery of the whole family. Hence the bar story.”

Nat sighs. “Leave it to you to be roofied and still remember me starting a bar fight.”

Laura had only been in the bar to drag her home, and Nat had only been there for a meeting on neutral ground with an unsatisfied client and while she was absolutely not touching the drink she'd been given, it hadn't occurred to her that she'd need to warn Laura.

“You didn’t start a bar fight.” Laura smiles, warm and vicious. “No one came near us once you snapped his arm and left him screaming on the floor. To be honest, I don’t remember anything else after we got to the car, but I’ll treasure those screams when I’m old and senile.”

Nat had driven around to make sure they weren’t followed, gotten a large iced coffee and some caffeine pills and parked in the back of the visitor lot for the hospital, coaxing the stimulants into Laura to try to combat the sedative, hoping like hell she could take her home without getting doctors or police involved. Hours later she’d half carried her up the stairwell to their apartment, and laid awake beside her until morning, making sure she was alright.

When she came back in from cleaning the car, Laura had pulled her into a big long uncomfortable hug, and things had never been the same between them since. “So now I’m outed as a brawler.”

“No, no, baby - and I’m quoting the Admiral here - you're ‘good in a crisis’.” Laura rolls her head back, faint smile. “Yeah, I was wondering why you’d dropped out, why you weren’t already halfway through founding another company, riding Captain America off into the sunset. I think you’ve found your people here.”

~*~

Thor hoists the grill like it's a sacrificial lamb.

Darcy follows behind with the actual roast, basted and strung up with fancy knot work and ready to go.

"I bought a quarter of a lamb to share with Jane," Darcy says. "But then she got the grant, so here."

Bruce looks at them both, points at the deck. "Grill on the deck, meat on the counter, there's a big washtub I'm willing to haul out of the garage if someone wants to confirm how many damn people are invading. We can send Nat to the party store."

Nat meets his pointed smile with a studied bland incomprehension, “But we already have a party...”

Bruce talks to Darcy while still looking at Nat, his eyes making promises for later retribution. “Beer and ice run, Lewis, if you would. She'll buy you a candy bar for your trouble.”

He pauses. "And Thor, do NOT touch the dragon."

“Aww,” Darcy turns halfway across the deck to give him her sad puppy face.

“It’s just not rated for his weight. Or his enthusiasm.”

~*~

“What the hell is Blue Moon, anyway?” Laura is taking full advantage of not being the parent on duty for the first time since weaning Nate, unapologetically getting lit in the lawn chair she's claimed by the bonfire. “I was expecting raspberry, but it's definitely not any fucking fruit.”

“It's Blue Moon,” Thor says, “it just is.”

“Some funky vanilla?” Darcy suggests, “Praline without nuts?”

Angie shakes her head, gesturing with her beer bottle. “Oh god, Phil has that look like he knows.”

“I'm surprised you don't.” Phil is all mild concern. “What with your foodie expertise.”

Peggy leans between them, a move that would almost look protective if you didn't know they were both scrappers when cornered. “Yes yes, you hold all the mysterious knowledge of the universe, just tell us.”

Phil demurs, “I don't know if you're ready for that kind of intel.”

Peggy gives him a frank look.

“Fine.” He settles back in his chair, hands folded in his lap and shoulders dropping with ease. “Nutmeg.”

“Liar!” Laura shouts gleefully, then pauses, considering, “Oh shit, you're right, aren't you?”

~*~

Thor is leading Nat through a series of dance steps out on the deck. She's picking them up quickly, and mostly Bruce is watching their mismatched silhouettes as he casually keeps an eye on Nate. Laura’s in deep discussion with Peggy about historical furniture, because it turns out she has read every nineteenth century diary and memoir she could get her hands on, and is thrilled to find someone she can have an earnest buzzed conversation with about dry sinks and trundle beds.

Nate fusses a little, more bored than anything, so Bruce picks him up, hefts him in the air and gets him giggling. He plays toss the baby for a bit, gauging the upchuck factor with the wisdom of experience. Then he soothes him down and tucks him back into the corner by Laura, who raises her brows.

Bruce sits on the couch, sharing a smile with the baby. “Been awhile, but the same old tricks work.”

Laura brushes her fingers over Nate's downy head. People are starting to leave, but there's a mellow ease to the evening still. 

Nat comes in, sits on the couch and crosses her ankles on Bruce's thigh.

"Kids are with Thor," she says, "He's telling them outrageous lies. It's spectacular."

Darcy is drinking the end of the Alsatian white. "He has the _best_ stories, he winkles them out of the vets and retirees when he teaches salsa on Thursday nights. A lesson upstairs and then the tavern has a Latin dance night. It's a trip. Mostly it's the tourists but some of them are a hoot and the music is great. It's fun if you don't mind leaving a little dignity at the door."

~*~

Lila is the one who makes the formal demand, in exchange for allowing herself to be put to bed, "Make it barf fire."

Bruce looks at Nat. "Wanna do the honors? I'll corral the troops."

They circle around the edges of the concrete slabs, drinks in hand as they look up at the gleam of Ethelred in the dim lights from the house, the flicker of firelight from down on the beach. Nat opens the keyguard and unlocks the mechanism, hitting the buttons for all three sequences in succession. 

The dragon's head moves, the neck and jaw twisting in micro-movements that make the copper feel pulsing and alive. It sniffs the air, huffs and works up to a full throated call. The effect is eerie and beautiful, glass eyes rolling back as fire roars into the sky. The crowd gasps, and then hollers. 

Angie punches his arm. "You're an asshole if you don’t take that bad boy to Grand Rapids next year."

~*~

"She was the most composed kid you've ever seen," Laura says. She and Bruce are the only two left by the dying fire on his small stretch of beach, Nat shoveling two spent kids into sleeping bags inside her house. The baby is tucked into Laura’s arms, milk drunk and passed out, mellow like Ellie had been.

“Composed?”

"You know kids, even the serious ones are readable, but Nat was just...you couldn't guess what was going on in that head. It took me years to believe she was telling me the truth when I'd ask her about grades, or if she'd eaten or if she felt okay."

Bruce swirls the dregs of his beer around in the bottle.

"I'm not telling tales," Laura says, "just...I see her smiling here and...there's no agenda to it. I want to throw my arms around her, tell her I'm proud of her like she's one of my kids, but she might punch me."

His laugh is cut short by Laura’s expression.

“She’s a small pretty woman who survived a really shitty home life by spending as much time as possible out of it. You ever been a thirteen year old girl out after dark? I know for a fact she’s broken people’s teeth and bones when she was young, when other tactics didn’t work. She still has a kubotan for a keychain. Hell, she and Clint fought like cats a couple times, before he went into the Army. He could always see through the sweet guile, you see.”

"They were kids, even with Clint being older, and her dad was just... Ivan loved her like something pretty you display on a mantel, and she worked with that. Never acted out. Never really cried. She'd smile and you'd want to do whatever she wanted. Start those crocodile tears welling up and break your heart. But Clint always knew how to call her on it, weaned her away from that. The more options she had, the less she needed to control the people who had control over her, the more real she became."

All that feeling, he thinks, hidden so far down. Wrapped up tight, keeping her safe. He aches for her, for the kid she never really was.

~*~

Nat's family is entranced by the set pieces scattered throughout the crowd, the musicians in their Grecian robes, the maypoles and holiday lights. They're eating rainbow popsicles sold by the kids from the Unitarian Youth Alliance, strapped with coolers and strolling through the crowd.

Laura and Nat sprawl on the blanket as Nat points out the sets she helped to paint. Bruce anchors a corner, eyeballing the state of the prop tree Puck hides behind and trying to focus on possible repairs instead of things he should have done better. It’s nearly a decade old, some of the first work he did with vines and organic shapes, and no matter where they set the show, Angie always uses the tree.

"There's spiked punch at one of the stands, I hear," Nat says, breaking into his reverie.

"Is that a suggestion or a request?"

She smiles at him, wide and bright. "A suggestion. I'll help fetch."

He's a little surprised when she takes his hand, but he runs his thumb along hers. "Thank you again, for the grill. You didn't have to..."

"I traded," she says, amused and throaty. "And now I'm gonna teach a basic coding and robotics class for the final summer session at Angie’s guild. They've been doing some art of technology classes for girls, through the community center."

“That’s steep for just a grill.” It makes him uneasy that she’s plunged head first into what she calls the oddconomy, maybe underestimating the mercenary streak that’s necessary to the process, and he wonders if she’s able to take the long view that’s key to making these trade relationships work over time, or if she’s treating it as a fun form of tipping, willing to support the arts by being skinned by the artists. “Plus you also did some scene construction, how does that square?”

“You gonna help me balance my checkbook?” She teases, swinging their hands.

“I don’t want anyone’s feelings hurt.”

~*~

Nat holds on to Laura like she isn't planning on letting go anytime soon. Laura scrubs her face, wipes the back of her hand on Nat's shirt.

"Call me when you get home?"

"Of course."

“Promise me you’ll set up the daycare thing; you hire, I’ll do the payroll. You shouldn’t have to wait for story hour to have some time for yourself.”

“I already promised, didn't I?”

“Don’t blow me off, Laura, I will send nannies to your house like prank pizzas.”

Laura folds her into another hug and shakes her a little. "I'm not going anywhere, baby. I just needed to say out loud that it fucking sucks. But I'm not going anywhere."

Nat will never get used to Laura’s ability to slip under her skin, find the most painful thing, and just pluck it free with a gentle reassurance. "I’m that transparent?"

Laura snorts. "To the maybe three people on the planet who don't think you're an enigma, you're at least only partially opaque."

Nat furrows her brow, amusement and disbelief.

"It's a good place Nat. You...you're good here."

~*~

When she gets back from dropping them all off at the airport, Bruce comes over to meet her as she’s unlocking her side door. He’s got the ceramic insert from his crockpot in one arm, and a tentative look on his face. “I thought you might be hungry, maybe.”

“Did you.” She lets him in ahead of her, and he sets it on her kitchen counter. She had a late lunch in town with Laura and the kids, but if she plays this right she’ll score whatever’s in that crock as well. “What’s on offer?”

Bruce shrugs, “Chili. Whatever.”

It was a short jaunt from the airport, and she was glad to be out of the strangely empty car, thinking the whole way that if something happened to Clint, it would be hers and what the hell was she going to do with it? Laura didn’t want it, and she wouldn't be able to bear looking at it, and besides, she only has the one slot in her tiny garage. She should get a real car that can handle snow, see about where she can store the stupid Probe, and honestly, she’s chased these thoughts all the way home trying not to feel bereft and unmoored. She repeats, “Chili.”

“Or whatever.” He says, as if the fact of him standing in her kitchen - in her house that’s only less empty because he’d pushed her to actually start furnishing it - is nothing very interesting or special, just a way to pass time perhaps.

Suddenly, it doesn’t feel like that at all.

“Whatever.” She decides, her breathing already kicking up as he nods and licks his lips, stashing his crock in her fridge and she nearly laughs at the import of that, her palms itching until he straightens and she grabs a handful of his shirt to haul him down the hall and into her bedroom.

The sheets are still a mess from the night before, restless sleep and no one to care if she only straightens the blanket right before she gets back in, the patina of civilization she’d carefully acquired living with Rogers long fallen to the wayside. Bruce doesn’t care; she’s seen his bed, his couch, his hammock, the odd catnap corners he kips in.

Nat fiddles with his buttons, quick and focused, having a care for the clothes of someone who lives far closer to the bone than she does now. She’s gnawed on those bones. She’d worn the same three bras for two years straight, not so very long ago.

He’s caught her mood, or maybe he saw it coming like a storm blurring where the water meets the horizon, but either way he’s put himself in the path of it, and he’s just kissing her, sweet and focused as she strips them both down. She grabs him by the handful, pressing as much of herself as she can against him, then shoves him down on the bed to reach more of him.

“Nat.” He scoots back so his feet aren’t dangling off the side as she crawls after him, pinning him down with one forearm across his chest and a hand wrapped around his hip, mouthing his shoulder, his nipple, the tender skin down his side. “Natasha.” He twitches up as she takes him in hand, and she moans at the sight. She tangles her calf with his, snugs his thigh right up against her cunt, and softly grinds as she works her way back up and kisses him with the salt of his skin on her tongue.

He’s palmed her ass and is working the bucking of her hips along his leg, like it doesn’t matter if they only rub off on each other, but then the hot silk of him so alive in her hand is still not enough, and she pulls out of the kiss with a scrape of her teeth along his lower lip and tells him to fuck her.

She’s expecting a simple flip, but he scoots up and comes around, pressing down on her back and tilting her hips up so her ass is in the air. He runs fingernails down her back, shiver of overload and want, suckling kisses on the cheeks of her ass as he works her with his hand, like he’s got all the time in the world. She pants, “Damn it, Bruce,” and he laughs, muffled.

“Patience,” he draws up and eases the head of his cock between her lips, firm grip on her hips to keep her still, “I’m not going anywhere.”

She’s decided to ignore him, nothing he’s saying is useful at this point and he has more material help to offer. She wriggles a fraction, getting the angle right, then pushes up on her hands and shoves back to drive him home.

“Fuck,” he breathes.

“Yeah, that’s what I _said_.”

“Well, since you ask so nicely...”

She admits to herself that she's goading him, countering his attempts at a slower sensuality with hot demand… Or maybe it's more like his soothing only stokes her need, makes her want to consume him whole, keep something of him. 

He does finally flip her onto her back, pinning her and trying to still her for a moment. “I'm not going to last if you keep this up.”

“You'll figure something out,” she says, bucking under him with a pulsing squeeze and pushing him over the edge, watching him go off and thinking yes, control is certainly a part of it, vulnerability and trust, but it's not a withholding, maybe just a need to wait for a measure of safety. She runs her hands down his back, cradles him with her thighs as he regains composure.

He looks down at her, wry. “I'm going to get a glass of water, and then I'm going to raid your bedside drawers.”

She squeezes him once more, enjoying his flinch and shudder. “And what do you expect to find there?”

“The usual suspects.”

“Hmmm. Could be some unusual ones, too.”

“Even better.”

“Oh really?”

“Do I look like a guy who's afraid to use tools? What better way to spend the next twenty minutes or so?”


	6. Prototypes and Iterations

A faint night breeze has finally kicked up after ten, taking the edge off the smothering late summer heat, when Bets calls Bruce in her version of a panic, which sounds angry and annoyed.

Bruce hadn’t really appreciated until years after their divorce how much of the disapproval he’d inferred was really her seeing him spiral into a dark place and clenching down on a hard panic.

“David’s gone - note says he’s heading to you. Do you know anything about this?”

“ _What?_ How long has he been gone?”

“He wasn’t here when Albert got home from work, I’d been texting back and forth with him, he said he’d been invited to dinner at Rick’s house and to stay overnight, but when I got home just now there’s a goddamn note half-hidden on the fridge--it says he’s taking the train. You don’t know anything about this?”

“Bets, I’d have called you, wouldn’t I?” He pushes through the screen door and lets it bang shut behind him, ducking through the path they’ve worn through the strip of underbrush between the houses. 

“I know, I know. But he’s _fifteen_ , Bruce.”

“I know, but he’s getting your height, filling out, he doesn’t look as soft as you think.” Six mosquitos land on him in the course of as many seconds, and he carries them into Nat’s house with him. She looks up from her laptop, eyes already sharp. He covers the mouthpiece as Betty runs down her end of the investigation. “I need you to look up trains from Chicago to here.”

“Rick intercepted my texts to his dad, and confirmed the sleepover, but I just got Rick's mom on the line and it’s all bullshit. Albert’s filing a report right now with the police--”

Nat has the answer in seconds, swiveling the screen and pushing him into her chair, the cushion hot. She lightly slaps at his arms, brushing the bloody remains off his skin as he reads off information on the Pere Marquette route. “It stops in Holland around eleven, I’ll meet it there--”

“Let me know the second you see that train, whether he’s on it or not.”

“I will.”

Nat’s disappeared, but when Bruce steps out of her kitchen she’s at the side door with his wallet and both their keys, locking it behind him. “I’m driving.”

“You really--”

She swivels on her heel and has the truck started before he can catch up, and yeah, maybe it’s better to have a cooler head behind the wheel. Her phone reads out directions to the train station, and then it’s killing half an hour as they wait for it to pull in.

Bruce feels displaced in the passenger seat of his own vehicle, even more vulnerable than hanging off the back of his motorcycle, this woman literally pushing him out of his comfort zone time and again, but she's serious as a heart attack as she watches the long stretch of empty track. Keeping watch with him.

“He's never done this before.”

She shrugs. “I did all the time. A day or a week, when things got too chaotic, or I had something better to do.”

A dozen follow-up questions circle his mind, but he chooses against deflection for once, feeling the urge to give her something real. “I hid in place. Couple spots. When things got loud, when they got physical.”

She doesn't turn her head, just keeps looking at the track.

Bruce can still smell the sun-baked wood and mouse droppings of the attic; the paint thinner and car wax fumes lingering in the rafters of the garage; the cold rawhide and musty bones of the armadillo that had died in the crawlspace years before. “I had stashes of books, food, so I hunkered down.”

“Makes sense if you didn't have a safe place to bolt.”

He huffs out a breath. He's still hedging his hope that David really is on that train, unharmed, but he hadn't really thought about being a safe place David was heading to; Bets and Al were far more stable. If anything, David might be worried enough about Bruce to want to check in, touch base at the house. It had been a good visit in Chicago, but short, and David was a brooder. He came by it honestly.

At the first sign on the train, Bruce darts out of the truck and into the station, Nat on his heels.

David disembarks from business class, earbuds in and the strap of his loaded backpack digging into a shoulder, casual as can be after six hours of train travel.

Nat’s swiped Bruce's phone at some point and is already texting Bets, not even a word about the archaic slide out keyboard. He watches his son catch sight of him and head his way, relief transmuting all of that fear into blind anger so that for a moment he can’t even see.

“I’ll fire up the truck...Bruce?”

He spares Nat a preoccupied glance. “Yeah.”

She wraps a hand around his arm, anchoring. “I just texted his mother that he’s alive and well. Don’t make a liar out of me.”

Bruce takes a real look at her. “No, I won’t.”

She gives him a long appraisal. She’s in drapey pyjama pants, robin’s egg blue, and one of the ragged thin t-shirts she sleeps in. She does not look like a summer fling, standing here with him in a train station in her beach sandals and no bra, as serious as he’s ever seen her. She looks like a friend who’s just helped him out of a burning house in the middle of the night. She nods at what she sees in turn.

He says, maybe not even audible over the milling handful of people moving past them, “Thank you.”

“I’ll pull the truck up.” She pads off.

When Bruce turns around, David begins with, ”I left a note.”

Yeah, because that was his major problem with this. “Why’d you leave home, son?”

“To come here.” David shrugs. “This is also my home, right?”

The anger flares again but Bruce shoves it down with a deep breath and fingers jammed in the corners of his eyes. “Don’t play that with me, David. We will discuss this. But first we’re giving your mother proof of life and getting you settled. Come on.”

Nat’s got the truck right out front and he forestalls the comment from David with a stern look. “Son, this is my friend Nat. Nat, David.”

“Ma’am.”

“Dear god, with the ma’am and everything.” Nat mutters, reaching over to fling the passenger door open, “Get in, baby Banner. Have you eaten? Here,” she hands over her phone, “look up something that’s open and doesn’t suck.”

Bruce makes him call his mother first, because he’s a dick and also because he doesn’t want to mediate that shitstorm. David pales noticeably under the sodium lights, but bears up. He takes after the Rosses physically, big eyes and a blunt chin that he’s maybe up to shaving once a week, heavy straight hair black like coal.

They go through a drive-through and David inhales a few burgers. Nat gets a chocolate shake that she nurses the rest of the way back, and still has going when she parks his truck and hands over the keys.

She’s halfway to her side door but Bruce runs to catch her by the wrist. She glances at David, still wrestling his backpack out of the cab, but Bruce shakes his head. “No, it’s fine. You’re not a secret,” and he cradles her cheeks and gives her a long pressing kiss, inhaling the scent of her like a restorative, a couple nibbling kisses at the end in a promise. Her hands rest at his waist, tentative, and when he pulls back, for the first time that night she looks at a loss.

“Let’s all see about getting some sleep. He and I will sort this out in the morning when I’m in less danger of beating his ass. I’m kidding. Mostly.”

“I don’t know, he might be the kind of kid who gets more stubborn under assault.”

And it’s meant as a joke, but he knows enough now to think it isn’t really. “Nat, I’m determined not to fuck it up any more than I already have.”

She draws a hand down his chest, lips pressed tight, before she turns and heads into her house.

Bruce squares up and enters his own.

David’s sitting at the breakfast bar paging through the printouts Nat’s added to Bruce’s hand-drawn gryphon plans, eating a big hunk of zucchini bread like it’s going out of style. Bruce does a quick calculation of how many loaves of the stuff the boy can pack away in a day or two, and thinks, well, that’s at least one problem solved. He sniffs the milk, pours a glass and slides it across the counter. He remembers the gnawing hunger of that age, and it makes him feel better to watch his son drink it down.

“Get settled. Breakfast is at nine, we’ll talk then. Afterward, I want the Christmas wood split and stacked by sundown.”

David's shrug is stained by the flush on his cheeks, and he heads off to the spare room with his backpack.

~*~

Natasha stands in her kitchen for a long moment, and maybe the only reason she moves at all is that her phone dings. She expects it’s a text from Bruce but instead it’s a forwarded one from Clint via Laura:

_you better have a gd garage nat_

She has a little one car garage, full of the previous owners’ tools and supplies, the lawnmower she used once before hiring a service, the snowblower she's secretly named Bluster. No room for Clint's Probe. She laughs evilly and types:

_Laura, ask him how to get gum out of upholstery._

She waits a beat and adds:

_stupid autocorrect, that should read cum._

~*~

It begins with a stifled throat clearing from the edge of her deck, though she's watched him gather his wherewithal for a while by his dad’s side door, tucking and shifting the sketchbook under his arm. He waits until Nat sets the tablet down.

“Can I get a ride into town?"

In her peripheral vision he moves like Bruce, except faster, without the veneer of measured calm. But looking right at him David clearly favors his mother, straight hair falling into hazel eyes, and puppy feet that promise better than average height. He gives her a bashful hopeful look that has the beginnings of Bruce's charm mixed with the sweet see-through guile of adolescence.

"You're allowed to leave the house?" She raises an eyebrow and his bravado vanishes.

"I, uh." He's stymied.

"Can you drive? Learner’s permit?”

He shakes his head.

"Ride that motorcycle?"

Another shake, with a hint of incredulity.

"I thought you were fifteen?"

He riles a little at that, "I live in Chicago. I take the L."

"Live here sometimes. And why don't you ask your dad?"

"He just got to sleep.” David's face gets serious, and she sees concern in his eyes that makes her want to stand in front of both Banners, keep the world from getting at them. “And I kind of promised someone I'd meet them..."

There's a blush across his cheeks and it's everything she's got not to laugh. Not a running away from home then, but a running to someone here.

"Okay," she says, "here's the trade. I take you into town, and you learn to drive something. I also need help moving some furniture around."

He considers, eyeing one of the piles where Bruce has stashed a partially disassembled tree. “Sure.”

She writes a note and takes it next door, figuring if David asks he's going to get a resounding and deserved no, but she’s been an aunt long enough to know that kids learn how to build a network of contacts by doing end runs around their parents. Plus, she’s curious, and thinks she has a much better chance at finding out the deal than Bruce.

He’s asleep on the couch, arm flung up over his eyes, and the thin quilt from the bed freshly draped over half of him like an option presented. She doesn't want to wake him up, but wants to send him to bed all the same.

It's somehow easier to interact with David without Bruce there, like translation instead of interpretation. She doesn't have to think about knowing him as a father, as someone with responsibilities so far beyond himself; she can just get to know this kid, like one of the younger kids in Phil’s workshop. She likes him, the defiance he's clearly just testing out, and the way he looks at his dad with this big, serious, adult wave of love and concern. She knows how that feels, and she can see between them how hard Bruce is working to be worthy of the love, and not justify the concern. 

She tucks the note into Bruce's loose fist and kisses his knuckles, the new burn across the back of his hand, because no one can see the moment of tenderness.

Nat tries to cling to that moment of tender regard five minutes later as David guns the Probe while only half in gear. 

She gives him one thing, he doesn’t overcompensate and start shifting and clutching willy-nilly, he resets back to neutral and sets his jaw in a disturbingly familiar way, then shoves it into reverse and methodically guns it again as he lets out the clutch slow. The drive train catches and they spray gravel and peel backward onto the grass in front of her house, coming to a sharp halt as he stands on both the clutch and brake.

David pauses, giving her a chance to renegotiate their deal as he looks at her through the side of his overgrown fringe.

“I’ve got all day,” she says, “you’re the one with the assignation.”

“I know what that means, ma’am.”

“Don’t _ma’am_ me like it’s a bad word. And you’re not correcting my assumption about a hot date, so there you go.”

He huffs grudgingly, and shifts into first with a little more aplomb.

It gets somewhat better from there, though the tachometer needle flails like it needs smelling salts all the way into town. She makes him double park and give over the wheel so she can ease it herself into a parallel space in front of the coffee shop.

He mutters, “Show off.”

“Damn right,” she smiles, pocketing the keys.

David tries to bolt down the sidewalk but she reels him back in by the hem of his t-shirt. “You’re sticking with me, I’m your handler until I hear otherwise. Come on, I’ll get you an ice cream cone first.”

He’s just as offended as she expects, but that was kind of the point, so she pulls him inside and gets a scoop of Blue Moon for herself. Maybe Phil wasn’t joking, it could very well be a sweet nutmeg, or almond maybe, if you don’t get distracted by the bright sky blue color. David shakes his head and pushes out the door, making a beeline down the sidewalk as if the woman trailing after him is a mere coincidence.

~*~

Breakfast had been frustrating, boiling down to the fact that David didn’t seem too upset about anything in particular, and was blithely willing to pay the penance for freaking out all the adults around him.

Grounded when he gets back? Fine. Out the door as soon as Ellie can come pick him up? Sure. Responsible for splitting as much firewood as he safely can while he’s here? Whatever. 

Bruce is also not pleased with Nat’s note, but he gets it, figures she’s probably good at assessing a flight risk, and that throwing a fit about it would be less than useless, so he works on housekeeping. He sweeps his work yard free of sand and leaves, and sifts through the bucket of the last week’s sweepings to pull out the metal shavings, slivers, drips and slags, dumping the clean sand and dirt back in the yard.

Ethelred’s mechanical head stares at him from one of the garage benches, eyeless. The rest, including a workmanlike replacement head with Lily’s original glass eyes, has been disassembled, crated, and is off to be installed on a concrete lily pad in the middle of a very rich person’s koi pond in a few days. The accompanying serpent is already planned out and most of the materials are ready to go, though he doesn’t start it yet. He checks his tools, his supplies, his pantry and freezer. He makes a grocery list for when he gets back in town after the installation. Bruce makes himself set everything to rights between projects, because he knows in the middle he can lose track of everything else, including time.

It’s like winter prep, only the stakes are lower and he’s not diving so deep for so long. 

~*~

"Look," says David, "I really don't... I'm not going anywhere. I just..."

There's a delightfully desperate look on his face. Natasha knows she doesn't even have to push, just wait him out, calmly licking her cone.

"I'm not going to do anything bad."

She lets him mumble and sweat, ambling along Division Street, shifty and nervous. There's beauty in a kid who's never taken a risk getting a hit of the free fall sensation of stepping out of bounds. How it's terrifying and exhilarating, that push out of the nest when you're ready to fly.

David's built up a good head of steam, agitated and outraged, and it's all over his face in this way that she finds weirdly endearing. She can't remember the last time she let anything wash over her that purely besides pleasure - and even that has been a recent acquisition, a choice, one confirmed and reinforced as that pleasure keeps passing back and forth.

He’s lingering near the Mexican place, and she raises an eyebrow and decides to put him out of his misery, as fascinating as it is to watch him really feel it gung-ho. "Seriously?" Then gestures at the door. “Alright, let’s do it.”

Daisy blushes so red when she spots them, hand up in a frozen half-wave, that Natasha almost forgives them both, but David is looking at the tiled floor of Paco's like it will swallow him up.

She looks between them and finally says. "Forty-five minutes. No one leaves the booth. I will be...outside."

Their server is an older lady she’s met in the kickboxing class. After the kids have been seated and Izzy comes back over to the cashier stand, she slips her number and says, "If they get up, would you text me?"

“Sure thing.” Izzy winks and tucks it in her apron, following her out the front door a step. “Hey, did Sam ask you about the tracking app? We’ve got GPS in our vehicles, but I know the Chief is salivating over the idea of being able to see a map of real-time response.”

“You’re on the Volunteers with Sam?”

“EMT, dive response team, ATV/snowmobile rescue.” Izzy shifts the sidewalk placard advertising the enchilada lunch special. “My aunt owns this place, so I help out.”

Nat sometimes feels like this whole town operates like a small improv theatre troupe. The lady slinging your mediocre cheese-drowned tacos could also be the one pulling you out of fire and ice the next day. She hadn’t thought much about the small town dynamics when she bought the house, really she was only thinking of a place of her own and a slice of lake view to keep it interesting. It’s a compelling idea, that maybe Nat doesn’t have a place in Drijfhout, she has a buffet of many options.

“You’ve got a drip, there,” Izzy smiles, pointing at Nat’s ice cream cone.

She catches up with the melt, and gives Izzy a nod, “Yeah, Sam’s talked to me, I’m sure I can set something up.”

It’s a straightforward project weaving off the shelf modules, so instead Nat parks herself on a bench and kills the time finishing her cone and plotting out points she wants to hit with the robotics class.

When she goes back inside she catches the tail end of some surreptitious hand-holding.

Nat is embarrassed for all of them, but also strangely touched. Her own youthful romance hadn’t been discovery but desperation, just as much about solace as sex, and hidden from the adults in both their lives out of necessity.

These two, bright and shining and innocent, are so safe, loved and supported. Daisy is accelerating right out of high school, taking AP courses online and planning to graduate early, not for college or a degree before she’s twenty, but to have more time apprenticing at a boutique furniture factory. David bears this legacy of genius and soulful worry, filling the pages of his sketchbooks with comics both gory and absurd.

She slips into the booth and is startled to realize she doesn't feel like an observer, looking at the precocious girl she shares a workshop corner with, and this strange boy who looks so familiar.

Protection. Threaded through the amusement, there's a strange sense of being concerned with their welfare.

Nat is not used to feeling the claims of others, not used to stepping up in this way for people she’s arguably just met. There’s more blushing and wriggling as the two of them reach for casual and fail, and it’s like watching toddlers stumble.

But responsibility is part of love. You can’t fuck with the people who care about you without dealing with the consequences of your choices. “Alright, I hate to break up the party, but we should get back.”

Daisy looks at her hands and David gets this hard set to his jaw, but Nat blinks at him, waiting for him to dare, and he picks something off the table with his thumbnail instead. 

Daisy scoots out of the booth. “I’ll text you?” 

“Yeah.” He kisses her on the cheek and it nearly kills Nat, the sweetness, the courtliness of it.

Daisy catches up to them a few minutes after they leave, a little breathless, tugging at Nat’s arm, "Hey, I forgot. Can I come get the couch tomorrow, if that's ok?"

Nat knows a play when she hears one but it's a pretty good maneuver. Still, she's not going to let the kids get away with it easily. She pauses, giving the young woman what she’s starting to think of as her bluff-calling blink.

Daisy shifts, her red Chucks scraping against the pavement. "Also, I asked around and my cousin has this piece that's too big for her apartment in Muskegon. She got it at an estate sale, one of those big waterfront ones that looks like a mammoth cabin, place was ridiculous, so many antlers..." She holds up the phone and Natasha looks.

It's perfect. Mid-century vintage, curved and generous like a Roman settee, it looks to be in good condition in a tufted grass green velvet that will pick up the colors in the current chair and the one that’s coming.

“She needs to get rid of it, it’s in the common hall since it can’t fit through her door…”

“Alright, you can get the couch tomorrow. And we’ll figure it out.”

~*~

David is chopping wood, working off what she imagines is both the biting welcome from his father and some good old fashioned anxiety-spiked lust. The kid's testing his own boundaries along with his parents’, and she thinks it’s taking a toll.

She swings her heel against the rung of the stool, drinking a cold green tea the color of the couch she’s still trying to figure out how to pick up. Bruce is tense, but trying. He’s sorting out metal components, leaves and vines and shavings going into different bins.

“You could have woken me up.”

She tilts her head, looking for the join where his frustration meets his studied calm. “True.”

He gives her a look, like he’s trying to figure out what to say that won’t come out sounding petulant or pissy, and whether he cares.

“Bruce?”

He takes a deep breath. “Natasha?”

Okay then, he’s angrier than she’d given him credit for, even if she’s not sure it’s directed at her or David or a combination of both. Maybe at himself, and that idea tightens in her throat. She’s seen glimpses of that, off-hand comments here and there, and she wants to head it off at the pass.

“They’ve been in contact since last summer, skype, text. A romance in cat videos and anime fandom, but you know...”

Bruce sighs, stops sorting.

“I think with all the stuff with the wedding...It’s a big change, and I’m not sure David really thought through staying in the city all summer. He started talking to Daisy more regularly and things got a little...intense, and he didn’t really want to tell you or Betty. I get the feeling dating hasn’t been on the table as a conversation, and so…”

“He got on a goddamned train and hauled up here to eat bad Mexican and talk about cat videos with a girl?”

“He's fifteen. I’m impressed he managed to leave a note.”

Bruce hangs his head down. “He’s a good kid. Not so much a kid anymore, but we’ve kept treating him like a child; he isn’t like his sister, she skipped from eleven straight to thirty and never asked a question about anything she could look up the clinical description of instead. Fuck.”

Nat reaches over to snag his fingers, catching his pinky with hers. “Bruce, he made a bad decision, rash and supremely stupid. But he’s still a good kid, just feeling his oats. Testing what he can. And damn it, this is _hilarious_. You know it is. I’ve been desperately trying to keep a straight face all day. These kids are killing me.”

He comes around to where she’s sitting and she hooks her ankle around the back of his calf.

“It’s beautiful when you think about it, a low risk pleasant adventure. It’ll be a funny story someday for them both - a youthful exploit they’ll tease someone with. It’s more than I’ve got.”

“Yeah,” he lets himself be drawn in, nodding reluctantly. “Me too.”

They’re each so careful to give plenty of space, not to knock against the tender scars of childhoods devoid of innocence. But it hangs between them, no adventures to share that weren’t high risk, ugly affairs. She palms his neck, protective.

“So...I know you’re trying to get the new piece going, and I don’t want to drag you away if you truly don’t have time, but you wanna ride shotgun on a clandestine furniture deal with me tomorrow?”

He presses his forehead into the crook of her neck, held tension that leaves her hanging with the offer, feeling the vulnerability of it, then brushes his mouth along her collarbone. “Okay. But then I really need to buckle down.”

The words are reluctant, but there’s tenderness in his voice that changes the tension from fraught into a pleasant hum that makes her delve her fingers through his curls and glance down the hall toward his bedroom with a sigh.

“Yeah,” he says, a little breathy. “I know.”

~*~

Bruce is the last out of the truck, feeling like the chaperone for the whole group. David bounds into the apartment building after Daisy like a tall puppy, Natasha strolling after in a pair of jeans and boots that look like she dug them out of the bottom of her closet, work gloves tucked into her back pocket flapping with the roll of her hip.

When he gets inside, she’s pushed her big mirrored sunglasses up into her hair, and is counting out cash to Daisy’s cousin. The couch is larger than he’d expected, and is already sitting out in the hallway, sad under the harsh fluorescent can lights.

“It looks abandoned.”

Nat smirks, “It’s just been waiting for it’s ride.”

He coaches David through lifting with the knees, taking the backward walking position for himself, and there’s a point when they’re shifting it onto the bed of the truck when his son not only bears most of the weight but shoves through at the angle Bruce hadn’t had a chance to suggest yet, and when it slides neatly home the boy just dusts his hands off with a nod and turns to find Daisy.

Bruce thinks, parental freak-outs aside, this kid will be okay.

~*~

The next morning Natasha pauses on the way to the kitchen to survey her little lakeside empire. The new couch is perfect, frayed at certain edges which frankly makes her love it more. It’s outrageously green, soft velvet that feels like a story, with enough heft and structure in it’s delicate midcentury outlines that the heavier Adirondack chairs are a perfect compliment.

The plastic lawn chairs have been moved to the deck for good, and while she’s a bit sorry to see them out in the weather, she’s satisfied in this bone deep way with the things she’s surrounded herself with. The people, as well.

In fact, there’s a person sitting in her lawn chair right now, dark riotous curls shot through with chestnut and some streaks of pink.

She looks like a translation of her brother’s high cheekbones, long legs and likely their mother's height. Her mouth has Bruce’s fullness, that catch of wry and warmth, but none of that explains why she's sitting on Nat's deck a little after dawn.

Nat lets her sit there while she makes coffee. She slides open her patio door and steps outside, offering a polite smile to the young woman staring out at the last traces of dark sky receding over the lake. “You must be Ellie.”

Ellie accepts the coffee, doesn’t ask for milk or sugar. Nat takes the other chair.

Her eyes are a warm brown, but her expression is shrewd and not at all girlish. "You know why dinosaurs?"

“Specifically?” Nat shakes her head. “Nope.” Ellie has a piece to say, clearly, and Nat knows that any real conversation will only happen once she’s cleared the queue, so she drinks her coffee and listens.

"I had a book when I was a kid, _Dinosaurs and Ancient Sea Creatures_. I loved it, but there was one illustration - _Bonnerichthys_ , it had this huge gaping mouth - just one day I imagined it coming for me and I couldn’t sleep, but it was my favorite book, so I also wouldn’t let it go.” Ellie takes a sip. “Things were already starting to go bad, probably this was the real issue, you know? Not some ancient filter-feeding fish. But Dad sat up with me each night, told me stories, tried to make me less afraid. It didn't help. I stayed up every night peeking at _Bonnerichthys_ until I could read my favorite book again and go to sleep after."

"He made your nightmares tolerable."

"I guess.” Ellie shrugs. “Or he couldn't let go of the fact that I fixed it myself."

Nat has run the numbers, has calculated how painfully young Bruce and Betty were when Ellie came along, both of them in the trenches of grad school, and she wonders if Ellie has thought of it that way yet.

Ellie takes a deep breath. “David says you’re fucking. But then, David’s just figured out hormones so he thinks everyone is fucking.”

Nat isn’t particularly shocked by this approach, but neither does she feel the need to clarify.

“David likes you; says you don’t take any shit. That you’re good for dad.” She lifts a shoulder like she isn’t sure what that means.

“I like him too.” Nat doesn’t clarify that either.

Ellie gives her a shrewd glance, but Nat can see that intersection of girl and adult in her eyes, how maybe she grew up faster than she should have, is still riding that as life gets uncertain in new ways.

“Your dad and I are friends,” she says. “Collaborators.”

Ellie swallows, and her expression turns so young it’s like a cloud has changed the light. Nat can see so much of Bruce in her that she aches for them both. She remembers nineteen - but she was on her own by then, already on the government watchlist, negotiating with Clint to keep her choices from backfiring on him, but unwilling to give up the extracurriculars entirely.

“Maybe he’s good for me, too?” She offers with a lopsided smile. “I bought a crockpot the other day.”

Ellie tilts her head in a nod. “Get the cowboy chili recipe, I like that one.”

They finish their coffee, listening to the lake and the gulls screaming overhead, until Ellie sets her cup down on the deck.

“I’m sorry about invading. The Liebers, the folks who used to live here, always let us come up and hang out on the deck when we were younger. I guess I was just...testing it out. It’s been a few years. I wanted to see if it felt like I remembered it.”

“Anytime, Ellie.” Nat doesn’t ask her if it matches her memory.

~*~

Ellie comes in the back door as Bruce is doing inventory, the coffee finishing up.

“Met your neighbor,” she says, giving him that eyebrow that used to crack him up when she was younger, before it turned into an accusation as they both aged and his guilt had weight behind it. Now, he can mostly take her expressions in stride, seeing reflections of Bets in her caution and her wariness, but also in her warmth when she allows him glimpses of it.

Although he’s curious, he knows better than to respond right away, Ellie draws herself out if you give her time to unspool. She shrugs and says. “I read about her when Stark Industries bought her company. Crazy that she ended up here.”

Bruce doesn’t take the bait, although he’s gentle. “Some people like the peace and quiet, El.”

She helps him fix breakfast, then tackles the Herculean labor of rousting David out of bed. They eat scones and butter, fruit and coffee, gossiping about the last minute wedding details and histrionics of their grandfather and Albert’s relatives, looking past that to the upcoming school year. There’s a kind of peace he feels here with his kids, a mellow feeling that’s so good it makes him wary, but he knows enough not to pick at that thread of doubt, to let himself enjoy the moment.

He shows Ellie the video of Ethelred in action, taking her out to the garage to see the dragon’s decapitated head.

She strokes the copper filigree, which echoes the wiring Nat laid carefully inside like veins and nerves, and says, “I read your papers this summer. One of my professors was a fan, pulled them for me, although I guess I could have looked them up myself.”

Bruce doesn’t know where she’s going with this, if it’s condemnation, curiosity, or something in between.

“I can’t understand half of it, not yet, but the parts I get are...Jesus, Dad. Some of my professors don’t even understand what you were working on, but they said it was brilliant. Mom too. And you just...gave it up to make metal monsters.”

The truth is so much darker, more complicated, but what can he say to his daughter, who is finally looking at him like she understands that he didn’t just flame out, that there was something there first, to burn?

~*~

The kids leave after lunch, looking to get to Chicago before rush hour, and Bruce starts on the serpent.

It’s been too many hours, too much focus, and the snake feels like work. He’s trying to regain some of the inspiration that had fueled the sketches back in the early spring and not make too many wholesale changes. Half of him is caught up in thoughts of the kids, the rest in his desire to make things that spark and move like the dragon, and he’s been wrestling himself to stay present. He thinks he should probably send Freida some pictures, give her the chance to massage the commission before it goes off the rails.

He’s not looking forward to another trip to that damned koi pond, but he also can’t walk away from the influx of cash reserves, not to mention his relationship with Freida taking a big hit if he flakes. He takes a few pics with his phone, taking advantage of golden hour as the setting sun angles below the tree canopy and floods his work yard.

He’s hunched down over his work light tightening a clip when Nat comes into the yard calling his name, and he straightens up, the ache in his back making him wince. 

Her face is serious, not concerned, just set, and he wants to put everything aside - this commission, his doubts, the way Ellie had looked at him like a mundanity replaced by a mystery, Bets moving on even if he’s happy for her, all of the paths he could have taken. He wants to look at this beautiful woman, standing in his workshop lit by the sun. He wants to drown in her, but that’s not really an option. _He’s_ not that kind of option, but she makes him feel...expansive. There are possibilities he hasn’t considered in so long that they’re not possibilities any more, dreams instead.

Except he’s starting to see them again--shimmering on her fine skin, hiding in her eyes, in her touch, in all of her rich, enigmatic brilliance.

He sets the light down, the LED beam bouncing off the workshop floor and she steps close, hand on his neck cool from the AC in her house. He turns and delves his hands into her hair to cradle her skull, kissing her, bruising and desperate, and she sparks off that need, just as desperate, teeth and tongue and grasping touch along his chest, his lower back, hand sliding into his jeans to grab his ass. He picks her up, her legs wrapping around his waist, hot and wanting.

They pull the blanket from the hammock, a layer between her ass and the workbench, and it’s awkward and rough, stripping enough to get to each other, greedy hands and hot skin, his teeth against the tendon of her neck, her nails scraping across his back, and he’s inside her before either of them have time to think about it, hard and rough, as she pulls his hair, pushes up, fucking him back like she can’t get close enough, and it’s too much somehow, a singing connection that shouldn’t be but is, as she bucks and clenches around him, and he finds a release like a snap of his spine, almost painful, and not nearly enough.

It might never be enough.


	7. Digging Deeper

Nat reads out an article about a kinetic sculptor in Maine doing a residency with Harvard’s physics department, gathering ideas and consulting with students to visually represent theoretical concepts, translate them into a physical expression.

Bruce rolls to his side, knuckles along the ridge of her scapula where she knots up from typing, he knows the spot because there’s a constellation of freckles at the end of the curve that slides onto her ribs. He spans that curve with his palm. Kinetic energy makes him think of waves - mathematical as well as those lapping outside, and he wonders if there’s a way to put them together. What sort of creature would translate through both.

He imagines the serpent floating in space, all skeleton and bone instead of covered in scales. It’s nothing like the commission, but there’s something compelling about the idea, about it representing sines and axes and alien life instead of a battle of beasts.

Nat tosses the tablet onto the chair in the corner, landing softly on the pile of mismatched hotel bathrobes collected there, and groans as Bruce works at the knot until it no longer crunches sickeningly.

“When I first started, I tried to turn the theoretical models I’d been working on into something tangible. But it’s hard to represent energy in 3-d.”

He’s trying to keep it light, but there’s a weight here, and even this many years past, lifetimes past, it’s still more than anecdotes. He’s not sure she wants the burden of it.

She turns her head, peering at him through her mussed hair. “My first few programming attempts went like that. I had an idea in my head, couldn’t code the logic right. I’d always broken into things, never made them. I had to work backwards, take a different perspective...” She lets that hang, more like a question than a statement, like she’s tentative about this turn of conversation as well, but willing to go along.

“The counselor thought it would help, I think.” Bruce thinks about how he draws Ellie out with empty space in the conversation, and thinks that maybe Nat’s doing that to him. It’s an amusing thought. “But I couldn’t put it all together, the end result was always frustrating, and then things got...worse. But it turned out I liked making things, the process of it. Sculpture is the physical part of physics - torque and forces in balance and chemical reactions. So I tried making something non-theoretical, and that was better.”

It had been all the best parts with none of the dreadful infuriating failure. Even now with the serpent, it’s more that he’s leapt past where he was when he designed it, it’s just the frustration of wrapping up the old shit when all he wants to do is tackle the new, and he’s really not willing to face the fact that he won’t have time to turn to the new until next spring.

“What did you make? What was the turning point?”

“It was Tony actually. I went to stay with him in California for a little bit, to get away from everything, and he basically gave me a blow torch and robot parts.”

She rolls a little, sits up on one elbow and strokes along the inside of his arm, his wrist, and he catches her hand, tangling his fingers with hers. “Do you miss it?”

“The blow torch and robot parts?”

She waits him out.

“I don’t know.” He’s quiet for long moment, thinking that she’s letting him unspool and it feels more like a soft unwinding than a hard revealing. “Yes, I guess. But not in a way that matters. I miss the exploration. I miss...the sense of discovery. Getting lost in it. Feeling the universe and all its mysteries open up around me. I know how that sounds, but...”

Her eyes are dark. “No, I...get it. There are types of effort that let you leave everything behind. A deep dive, information retrieval? You stop being yourself. You have to become someone else to understand the ways they express and fudge their identity, trace how they move through the world, anticipate their reactions. It’s satisfying to disconnect from yourself for a while. Kind of...cleansing.”

He swallows hard. “Yes,” he says softly. “Like having someone else living inside you, driving the bus. You can give yourself over to it.”

She cups his cheek, hint of a rueful smile. “Except then the FBI knocks on your door…”

“Or you lose your shit too many times, lose your job, lose your marriage…”

“Investigate the wrong person for the wrong reasons…”

“Ignore the reasons why you’re trying to become someone else...”

“Fuck those reasons. But yeah.”

“Yeah.” It’s wrong to joke about these things, Bruce thinks, the damage done, but it’s what they have, and there’s a strange reassurance in not having to censor.

Nat cracks her neck in a direction it only bends once he’s worked out that knot. It sounds like a dog cracking open a bone. “Yeah.”

He rolls onto his back. “I always had a temper. Poor self-control. Made impulsive choices. Had no patience for people who couldn’t keep up. My folks...when they died, it was a relief. I thought I could stop being afraid, but that doesn’t stop. You just start being afraid of everything else, taking it out on everyone else.”

He lets the thought drift off.

“Sorry. Therapy talk in bed, not that sexy.”

She shakes her head, reaches to pull his hand into hers, rest them against her stomach like it’s okay, like she’s finding her footing in this as well.

“I should have been working for CERN or one of the experimental labs, but funding kept getting cut and Betty and I both had careers. Ellie was a toddler, so I started a post-doc, took the academic appointment because there were research positions for us both, and that just didn’t happen often. But there was so much...bullshit beyond the science, and no one had ever trained me to be a teacher, or to be...compassionate to the students who were struggling. It was so much pressure, and I did a piss poor job of handling it, limping along for years. That was just how life was. It hadn’t occurred to me that happiness was a thing, or even just the lack of that persistent banked resentment.”

He runs his hand along the small of her back, pressing her down to him, and she brushes her mouth against his, the thick silk of her hair falling around them.

“You can’t really want to hear about all of this.”

He watches that pass over her face, as she legitimately thinks about it and comes to a decision.

“I do. I like to understand why people do what they do. Mostly they’re easy, and when they’re not...I like to know why.”

“So I’m not easy?”

She runs her hand down his body, clever fingers and nails skirting his hipbone, teasing, making his balls roll in reflex. He shivers, bucks up against her. “You’re pretty easy.”

He pulls her thigh up over his hip, grinding into her a little, looking to distract her, but she keeps pushing.

“You had options, I’m guessing. Maybe less favorable ones, but...”

He keeps hold of her hip and thinks about what he wants to say, not cagey but looking for a truth that will make sense said aloud.

“Things got really bad when I lost my job. And eventually, I kind of lost everything, and I had to figure out how to start over. That’s when I knew I had to let go of all of it. At least then. Let the theory rest, focus on the real. The people I loved, that I owed things to.”

“Did Stark…?”

“Tony tried to get me to come work for him, but it didn’t make sense. We’d done some fuel containment stuff, got a few patents. The kids are going to college on that money. But I wasn’t going to risk fucking things up for Tony. I couldn’t promise not to. I didn’t know, then, how to keep from flaking.”

It’s quiet.

“Stark offered me a job after he bought the company,” she says. “He keeps sending me offers like weird little presents.”

“And?”

“I don’t want to work for Tony Stark. Doesn’t mean I won’t make him pay out the nose for consulting, if he ever offers something interesting.”

It lets him off the hook somehow, the wry amusement in her voice, along with her nails up his back and the way she pulls him over onto her, meets his mouth, gives him a tangible to focus on instead of the memories awash in his head. She chases back his mistakes, lets him own them, maybe forgive himself for them. Just a little.

~*~

There are six girls in the robotics class, which is in the community center two afternoons a week. Nat starts them with simple codes, lines of logic and a step up from basic HTML because they all have blogs or know how to alter color and pictures.

She uses baby Ethelred as the project mascot, and splits them up into groups of three.

It’s surprisingly satisfying. At night, she plots out her own code for sketches of what she and Bruce have discussed, and works on lesson plans, altering them to suit each girl’s learning curve and interests.

Bruce has been a little distant since his kids left and he came back from installing the dragon. Head down, like he's running against a clock. She’s had things to do, and she thinks maybe he needs the time, and the space, the chance to focus and get through a project that she knows he isn’t enjoying. 

It’s been a week since she’s seen him for more than a few minutes during the day. The serpent commission is due before it gets cold out, and when she went over the other day to bring him a diner sandwich he was distracted, fried and unshaven, but grateful for lunch and he took a break to eat with her on her deck. She’s pretty sure he hasn’t been eating during the day if she doesn’t bring something over. She’s got equally dour suspicions about his sleep schedule.

She wonders too, how much of this distance is in response to talking about the past, but for her part she relished it. Not simply because she thrives on information and intel - can’t really put that to bed even if she no longer pursues the impulse to illegal lengths - but because it fleshed out the planes and curves of his kindness, his focus and attention, the moments when he sinks so deeply inside himself that he seems to disappear.

It gives her glimmers of a path that she might follow herself, from a place of trouble and isolation, to a place with sight lines and ley lines and connections.

But it’s never been her strength to know when to push and when to back away. She can take cues from the people she cares about, but she’s not exactly nurturing, and the thing about Bruce is that he’s so very, very controlled. For all his deceptive ease, reading the subtle hidden clues of need is harder than discerning the intention of a bad chunk of code.

She doesn’t want to misstep, but the idea of doing nothing doesn’t sit right either. So she waits and tries to gather more intel, increase her knowledge base from which to make a decision. And if it comes down to it, she’ll call Laura in as a consultant.

~*~

“Look, it’s not a big deal.” Ellie is clearly walking. Bruce can hear the buzz of a dining hall behind her. “I know you may not be able to come, but since I’m going home for Thanksgiving, which I didn’t do last year, and there’s a conference on campus that weekend that Mom is speaking at and…well, do you want to come for parent’s weekend?” 

“Parent’s weekend?” Bruce doesn’t bother to plot out the vectors of the stuff about Thanksgiving or conferences, instead zeroing in on the invitation like a golden ticket. “Really?” 

“Don’t be weird about this, Dad. I thought you might like it. I’d have just gone home with Yvonne but her folks like coming up and she convinced me that it won’t be horrible. She’s their third kid to go here, and I’ve got stuff due, and Mom got to come last year--”

“I’d love to.” She sighs at the interruption, but he’s long since over embarrassing her about such petty things. “I’m supposed to do an installation that weekend, but I’ll see if I can move it. A few days shouldn’t make a difference.”

“If it’s a problem, really it’s not a big deal. It’s a couple of crappy meals and a tour and…”

“I will be there. You can’t stop me.”

“Oh, god, you’re going to be completely weird about this, aren’t you?”

~*~

Nat leans against the counter, eating baby carrots out of a bag while watching him scrub russet potatoes.

“You know they just take regular size carrots and shave them down.”

“Don’t be judgy. I like ‘em. I wouldn’t have gotten any kind of vitamins in the last few years if it weren’t for these.”

“Parent’s Weekend,” he prompts again, like that’s somehow going to clarify it for either of them.

She rolls her eyes. “You went to college. You lived in a dorm. You taught at a university. You must have more of an idea how this works than I do.”

“One, no parents. Two, I…have no memory of this being a thing. I mean, I’m sure it happened, but it didn’t happen to me and so there’s nothing for me to remember.”

“Stark had parents.”

“Not the kind who visited at Parent’s Weekend.”

“Seriously? Never?”

He thinks about it while he packs the potatoes in salt and tin foil, sticks them in the oven. “Maybe? I don’t think so, though. His mom would drop by periodically, and some of the staff would show up and strip all the linens and…hopefully burn them. Tony was a huge slob and he never washed anything. But no. I don’t think so.”

“Well I don’t know either. No parents, but also, I never lived on a campus.”

He digs around in her bag for a carrot. It’s crunchy and tastes like standing pool water.

“What about your aunt, wouldn’t she have come? I think the college sends stuff to guardians.”

She says it like a question, and he thinks, yeah, Susan would have come. It never occurred to him to ask her, and he picks at that for a moment. “Huh. Yeah. I mean, I get stuff from MIT and Princeton, and I mostly recycle it – it’s alumni donation stuff, updates. Maybe I should read it. But I think Betty must get everything relevant. I’m not sure paperwork would have even gone to my aunt. I was an emancipated minor those first couple semesters, since I’d accelerated out of high school. The insurance settlement...well, it paid for my undergrad, and my address at school was on everything.”

He rubs his lip with his thumb, looking at her. The damned baby carrots are gone, and she balls up the plastic bag, puts it in the recycling. She gives him that devious half-smile that actually covers up more than it reveals.

“I had an elaborate routing system that first year so I’d get the bills, since the registrar wouldn’t email anything, and I didn’t really have a physical address for awhile. Stuff to Laura’s, mostly, if it meant money.”

“You weren’t officially emancipated, should have been in the foster care system. How did you even register for classes?”

“Birth certificate, GED, forged signatures, paid in cash or cashier’s check from an online account. I had a social security number. Technically. Possibly not my own. They didn’t double check much at the community college if you weren’t applying for loans, so I was already in the system when I eventually transferred the credits to university. And afterwards I was in a different kind of system that was keeping track of my activities.”

He’s not always good at gratitude, certainly didn’t used to be, but there’d been an adult in his corner making hard calls, looking out for him. Susan had fought to get the incident deemed an accident, to secure the life insurance payout for Bruce instead of justice for her sister, and that ruthless practicality had secured his future. He’d been lonely, but he hadn’t been alone.

Nat had weathered all of that without a true advocate, for however much her family loved her, hunched over a keyboard clawing open opportunities any way she could.

He snags at her belt-loop, tugs her into his space, and she leans up against him as he rubs the back of her neck.

~*~

Nat and Angie have gone with Thor and Darcy up to Muskegon to help them with a light installation, so Bruce finds himself in Peggy’s living room for conversation and company. He's got a bourbon in his hand, which he knows is a dubious idea, but Peggy breaks out the good stuff for him.

“It was a good season.” She clinks her glass against his. “Enlightening, even. Uproarious.”

“Subtle, Peg.”

She’s curled in an ancient recliner and she leans her head against her hand. “You’ve work for the winter, projects. You’ve already talked about building casting models for the chickens. You’ve got inspiration, companionship. So why the long face?”

He sprawls back on a divan that looks like a sleigh, stocking feet because he’d left his work boots in her foyer. “It’s just been a long time, I guess. I’ve kept myself on track, made sure I was good and focused for the kids, and now there’s...things have a way of going bad so quickly. I feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, somehow.”

“Bruce…”

“I know, I know. I’m being melodramatic. I get it. I’m projecting disaster when there isn’t any in sight. But if I’m not prepared for it, I’ll get blindsided. That’s what happened before.”

Peggy speaks partially into her glass, “Because of course you haven’t learned a thing or two since then.”

Bruce tilts his head to acknowledge her point without necessarily agreeing.

“I think you may need to consider the idea that disaster doesn’t have to accompany the possibility of happiness.”

“That’s a big consideration.”

A few more glasses in Peggy starts describing the tangled web of favors and trades Natasha has been weaving through Drijfhout like a web, guy lines into Phil’s shop and Angie’s community theatre, fine connections spun from an hour or a day of labor, simple tasks at the shop, more than one sofa, a riding lawnmower, and computer work for the volunteer Fire Department/EMS.

“Really.” Bruce digs his heels against the divan cushion, sliding off his socks because now he’s warm from the bourbon. “She told me she didn’t do tech support.”

Peggy’s smile is almost fond, “Yes, she makes a lot of noise about that, but I think it’s mainly to pad the time it takes her to fix it, make it seem like more of a favor, don’t you think?”

Bruce thinks he shouldn’t have been too worried about the locals skinning the nouveau riche tech head. Not one who keeps a crescent wrench under the driver’s seat of her beater sports car. He knows it’s not her brother’s because it’s labeled Наташа in chipped black nail polish. “So wait, does this tie into Sam’s kickboxing class?”

“That’s a tricky one, because she put together a satellite mapping thing that helps the rescue teams coordinate responses and see each other’s ETA on their phones, but I think the class is where she put that deal together…” Peggy continues, describing a trade four layers deep that she suspects is aimed at scoring some of Kate’s first deer of the season. Kate was just as well-known for killing deer as she was saving people.

“ _Venison?_ ”

She gestures extravagantly with her glass, “When in Rome, darling.”

Bruce changes his mind and offers up his own for a refill, shaking his head. “Tricky to get right even if she _could_ cook.”

Peg has taken off her makeup for the night, which makes her deep brown eyes the focus of her face, so the narrowing of them is blatant sarcasm. “I suspect she has a cook already in mind.”

Bruce sips. “I guess we’ll find out--when does archery season begin?”

“Do I look like I keep track of hunting seasons?” Peggy scoffs, “I’m trying to plan for the spring orders while making it through the pre-Christmas crush with my sanity intact.”

“Hah, yes.”

~*~

Natasha is still sweaty from kickboxing, even after cooling off on the drive home. She’s heading for the shower when her living room lights flash, and it takes her a moment to remember that this is the doorbell and not a dodgy transformer, though it doesn’t explain why Peter is on her porch, bobbing and weaving like he expects her to pop out of her own bushes instead of open the front door.

Peter always looks shifty, antsy and barely old enough to drive despite his lanky frame. He holds out the pizza like an alibi, “I rang the bell but he didn’t answer, so I thought, well…”

“That you didn’t want to bring back a wasted pizza and no money after hauling out here at nearly 10 p.m.? Or was it the lack of a tip?” Peter’s turn at Puck had been cheeky and nigh on acrobatic, but Nat was not convinced that any of it was acting. She suspects he also deals a little weed, and she admires his initiative in working both demand and supply. She also suspects that’s the main reason Pompeii is still in business, as just smelling this is giving her heartburn.

He wears his oblivious teenage expression like a mask. “Your light was on.”

“Seriously?”

He shrugs.

She takes the box. “I think I’ve got some cash.”

She doesn’t bother to knock on Bruce’s door, just takes the pizza round the back and opens the screen door.

The house is mostly dark, only the light over the sink illuminating the main area. She puts the pizza on the counter and heads out towards the workshop. 

It’s getting chilly to work outside after dark. Not impossible, but uncomfortable if you’re aware of your surroundings, although she’s pretty sure he hasn’t been. She calls his name. Doesn’t get an answer. 

The light coming from the workshop is dimmed, and there isn’t even music.

He’s got his head pillowed on his arms on the workbench, conked out.

She lets him sleep, taking the flashlight he keeps on the end of the bench and heading out to the work yard to look at the serpent. The air near the ground is still, but there’s a cold breeze running through the trees about twenty feet above her, rattling the leaves in counterpoint to the sound of the waves. She stands between the rudder fins that splay out from the belly to form a stable tripod footprint for the forward section of the serpent. For a long time she plays the light over gleaming dynamic curves, rearing, reaching, poised to strike.

The damned thing has nine heads and eyes like pools of blood. It’s beautiful, and horrifying, and doesn’t look at all like the sketches.

“But hey,” she says to herself, “at least it’s not animatronic.”

Bruce is still sleeping when she gets back to the garage, so she puts her hand on his shoulder, shaking it a little. It takes a minute, but finally he sits up, groggy, disoriented, like he’s missed his cue.

“Hey,” he says softly, the confusion curling across his mouth. 

“I regret to inform you that your pizza has arrived,” she says. “Terrible, terrible pizza. Pompeii is worse than Paco’s. But who’s judging?”

“I was hungry.” He squints, information retrieval through the fog. “I think it might have been awhile.”

“Since you ordered?”

The squint is tempered by chagrin as he offers, “Since I ate?”

She lays her hand on his cheek and he tilts into it, sliding an arm around her waist under her shirt. His hands are cold but the rest of him is sleepy warm. He nudges her to stand between his legs. 

“Hey,” he says again. She relents and pulls him to her, and he wraps both arms around her hips and presses his cheek against her belly with a deep breath. His stubble has grown past the bristle stage, long enough to bend soft as she runs her thumb along his jaw, fingers threading back into his hair. He smells sharply of rust and ozone and sweat.

“You should go to bed,” she says. “You need a shower.” Not sure what else to say. It’s been days of no contact. “You should eat some of your terrible pizza, maybe.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, muffled against her shirt.

“Yeah,” she pats his back. “C’mon.”

Bruce follows her into the house, and she starts the water in his shower before shoving him in, then sits at the kitchen counter. She gets halfway through a slice, avoiding the pepperoni which seems to have a pH incompatible with human life, and puts the rest back in the box. She’s a little startled by how empty his fridge is, though the freezer is fairly stocked. She pulls out a loaf of bread and a container of some sort of soup or sauce, puts it in the fridge to thaw.

He’s sitting on the edge of the tub, looking hollowed out and dazed, scrubbing his head with the towel like he’s not sure how he got there.

“Food,” she prompts.

“I’m beat.”

The non-sequitur is diagnostic, and she revises her expectations downward again. She comes back with the pizza and a glass of water, and sits on the counter by the sink and watches while he eats, one piece, then two disappearing as his body catches up to the fact that food does actually exist out there. He refills the glass and drinks it down. He looks less pale than earlier, but also like parts of his brain may have already fallen asleep.

He’s in bed by the time she returns from putting the plate and the glass in the kitchen sink, sprawled out atop his rumpled sheets, naked. She tugs the top sheet and the quilt over him and turns to leave.

“Stay. Please?” He shifts to pull his face from the pillow, “I know...it’s a lot to ask.”

It’s not...what they do. What they were doing, or are doing. Not exactly. They tangle together, entwining lives and work and bodies and ideas. Experiences, some tentative memories. They fuck, and they talk, and they listen, sussing each other out. But they haven’t just...slept.

Kept watch.

It’s an intimacy that curls nervy in her belly, the desire to see him through the night after he’s run himself down, to step in and give him ease. To take the liberty with him in this vulnerable state.

Plus, she’s a little pissed off. Maybe not even at the neediness, she’s taken care of more ornery and annoying drunks, and helping out Laura right after Cooper’s birth had been like babysitting a zombie who was by turns sluggish and vicious. It’s the lack of care Bruce had taken, to let himself get like this in so short a time. It’s that she hadn’t had a clue, he’d just gone dark like he sometimes did, only this time he wasn’t fine.

This is the thought that sways her; that he’d finally asked for something. “I need to lock up, turn off the lights.”

“Nah, if you go, you won’t come back.” His voice is thick, slurry and ragged. “S’fine.”

She puts her head against the door frame. “I will,” she says. And she means it.

He’s sprawled out when she returns, and she thinks hard about just sleeping on the couch - the letter if not the spirit of his request. Instead she toes off her shoes, strips down to her t-shirt, and crawls into his bed, propping spare pillows so she can sit up against the headboard. He gravitates to her warmth, curling an arm around her hips like the shipwrecked clinging to flotsam. She splays her hand between his shoulder blades, turns on her tablet, and starts planning for tomorrow.

~*~

Nat cleans up her work space at WrekerWerks and is weighing her options for lunch when Bruce texts her that he’s waiting outside in the parking lot for her if she wants to join them.

“It’s a party,” Nat says when sees Angie, Jane and Darcy jammed in the backseat of his truck like kids on the way to youth group.

Angie says, “We decided a quorum was in order.”

“I can buy pants on my own.” Bruce’s hands tighten on the steering wheel. “I don’t need a quorum. However, everyone wanted to go shopping.”

“Once we convinced you to go to the nicer mall.”

Bruce’s expression toward Darcy in the mirror is incredulous but weary, “I never actually agreed to that, but whatever.”

“You want to look respectable, but not like you’re trying too hard,” Angie advised.

“I’m not auditioning,” he sighs. “And I already agreed to buy new jeans.”

“He says that,” Jane chimes in, “like it’s just that simple.”

They herd him through the men’s department at Macy’s. Despite the mutinous look on his face, and a pointed remark that there was a Macy’s at the other mall, too, Bruce takes an armful of pants, but he balks at trying them on. “I know my size.”

“He’s serious, isn’t he?” Darcy asks Jane in a stage whisper, as Angie closes her eyes and shakes her head.

Natasha simply points toward the dressing room. “If they fit, come show us.”

When he fails to appear, she goes to find him. He’s looking over his shoulder, staring at his ass in the jeans.

“Are you checking yourself out?”

“I don’t even know. They look fine, yes?”

She slides her hand into his back pocket, then rises up on her toes to whisper in his ear. “Buy the damned jeans, Bruce.”

Obligation discharged, Darcy and Jane head deeper into the mall to look for snow boots and Angie hares off to troll Sephora for samples.

Nat wanders into accessories while he pays, picking up a soft grey knit hat with white snowflakes. She puts it on her head, gauges the look, and pulls it off.

“You need one with a pom-pom,” he says, stowing his wallet as they walk.

She laughs, “I don’t need a hat,” but it apparently wasn’t a joke on his part.

“Are you planning on leaving the house this winter?”

“I’ve never needed a hat before. Besides, wool, static, no humidity? Hat hair, all the way.”

“Do you want to be warm? Do you want to keep your ears? And it’s Michigan. Everyone will have hat hair for the next six months.” He smirks, “You'll look like a dandelion, it'll be great.”

She glares. 

“You’re gonna need a hat. But don’t get one here.”

They’re walking by a row of wool coats, luxurious and well-cut. She halts him briefly, fingers on his arm, and then grabs a dark blue coat with brown buttons. 

“No.”

“Humor me.”

“I’ve got a coat.”

“C’mon, please?”

It fits well through the shoulders and the sleeves and the color is good. He looks at her, long-suffering but amused, and says, “I really don’t need a new coat.”

She slides her arms inside it, hands underneath his shirt because the back of the jacket covers them. “You look nice,” she says.

He leans into her because she’s warm, and she smells good, and this kind of odd intimacy is more comforting in some ways than the regular sex or the companionable collaboration - those small moments in public when the world narrows down to a private moment, the conversation a ruse just to touch and be held.

He brushes his mouth over her ear, and says, “You already used that line. But thank you.”

And then kisses her cheek and sloughs the coat, hands it back to her.

~*~

Sam stops her on the way out of class. He’s got a towel around his neck, breathing as heavily as his students. Nat has a pleasant buzz - endorphins and energy and the joy of kicking the shit out of something that’s not a threat.

“Angie said you’re thinking about doing an after-school thing, continuing the stuff you worked on this summer.”

She nods, shoulders her bag up higher. “If it works out, yeah. There’s a couple of tracks I could take with it. Thought it made sense to create a proposal first.”

“I’m the part-time guidance counselor, up at the high school. Maybe we can chat about what it would look like. Maybe work with the science department, get the students some extra credit?”

She’s a little surprised when Bruce picks up the phone, and she’s decided to stop giving him options he can back out of. It’s her trade off for a sleepless night spent pressed against him.

“Come over for dinner,” she says.

“What…”

“Sam Wilson and Angie and I are creating an extracurricular course. We’re hashing out some details and I’m making dinner.”

“Grilled cheese?”

“Smart ass.” Nat presses, “That a yes?”

He pauses. “Why?”

She leans against the counter. “I want to simplify what we did with Ethel, create modules for building her. And you’ve already done that on a big scale, so maybe we can figure out a small scale.”

“You don’t need me for that,” he says.

“She’s yours,” Nat says. “I guess I want the sign off.”

He’s quiet.

Nat bites her lip, thinks about him on that obnoxiously yellow wall phone in his kitchen, and wishes she had that long twisty cord to fiddle with.

He says, “She’s ours,” like he’s confused she would even think otherwise. “What can I bring?”

“Angie’s bringing soup. I think Sam said something about dessert. So wine? Or salad?”

“I don’t think I’ve got anything green.”

“Yeah, you do. There’s spring mix and spinach and some baby kale in there. A bag of rainbow carrots.”

“Nat--”

“Shut up. Bring your greens over and make a dressing. I got a shallot just for you.”

By the end of dinner they’ve hammered out a proposal for the class, and Angie has settled into an attitude of blatant amusement with Bruce for some reason Nat can’t decipher. It’s one of the last evenings warm enough to spend outside if there’s a fire, testified by the faint whiff of burnt marshmallows and weed coming from further down the shore when she slides open the door.

Sam and Angie arrange the deck chairs around Nat’s pottery stove as Bruce follows her to her small wood pile.

Bruce knocks and rattles the wood before stacking logs onto her arms and says, “I’ll help you clean up later. After.”

“After?” His eyes gleam in the dark, hungry but soft, not just desire but longing. There’s a strange ache in her chest, a feeling of being pulled. The weight of the wood in her arms grounds her, gives her a barrier against the rawness of that look even as he closes the distance.

He slides her hair behind one ear, outlining the shell but otherwise only touching her with his breath, “After.”

After is breathless and lush, the window of her bedroom cracked open, wood smoke and crisp fall air on cool skin, hands grasping as he slides her hips onto his lap, rolling thrusts and her spine arching as her release sweeps through her, grasping him tightly against her as his own orgasm follows, his face buried in her neck.

He's warm under her sheets, pulling her to him in a boneless tug when she comes back from the bathroom, and she falls asleep across his chest with a thigh tucked between his, fingers tangled together. Everything starting to tangle.


	8. Falter

Jane waves them into The Tangled Web even though the sign says closed. 

“It’s slow, so I was getting some work done on the grant.” she says, “I forgot I flipped the sign earlier when I had to pee. But we’re open; Stitch n’ Bitch is this evening.”

“You going back to Wisconsin?”

“That’s the idea. I hate not being here, but if I can do a fiber arts residency there in the winter, I won’t have to worry so much next year, and it’ll give us some breathing room to do more of the light installations. I really think he’s doing interesting work, but you know how it is. So much piecemeal to make ends meet and not have to get an office job.”

Bruce nods, says, “Rustic chickens,” with a sigh and Jane laughs. 

Natasha tries on a series of dark berets with shiny thread shot through the weave. He bites back a laugh and she says, “Not zees one?” She looks like a knock-off Ninotchka. 

Jane gets up from behind the cluttered desk at the back, and as she passes the cubbies of yarn she plucks off an armful of demo pieces. “I think maybe one of these.”

The hats are made of soft wool in rich subtle colors. Nat rejects most of them - too hipster, too blue, too fluffy, too twee. She chooses a dark green heather the color of her eyes, with a giant pompom on top.

“I’m blending in,” she says, admiring herself. 

Bruce pays for hat. “Happy winter. Enjoy your ears.”

They’re still ambling a little along Division when she sees The Great Outdoor shop is open, and manhandles him in.

“You’re very pushy, you know that?”

“You don’t take direction well.”

“Maybe I have a lot of momentum.”

“You certainly handle that way. I think your power steering is out.”

He sighs as she pulls him toward the coats. “I told you I have a coat.”

“Yes, and the lip balm hoard in the pockets is impressive. But the thing literally has duct tape holding the feathers in.”

“How did you...nevermind. I know it’ll annoy me regardless.”

She continues like he hadn’t said a thing, “It’s gonna be cold in New Jersey. You’re making an impression. Sure it’s calculated, and I know you think it’s asinine to buy a new coat for a weekend, but it says something to Ellie and to her friends about who you are. It makes you innocuous enough to be welcome, and that’s all she wants.”

He wants to argue, that’s it just two rips, that he’d used electrical tape to blend in with the black fabric, that a coat just needs to be warm. But a part of him hears her point, and he doesn’t want to be more of a bizarre outlier for Ellie than he already is. He’s had a few days to realize Nat had either engineered the mall trip, or at least steered it masterfully; Darcy and Jane tossing back and forth anecdotes about their time at school, mentioning parents in passing as both alienating and comforting, Angie recounting stories from her students.

Such a small thing, but he’d been so grateful, getting memories and context over root beer floats and bickering about jeans. A gift to him when she couldn’t give him the knowledge or reassurance herself.

It’s equally terrifying, that she’s possibly invested enough to be thinking about and actively giving him what he needs. It makes him feel beholden with a debt he isn’t sure he can pay.

He buys a dark blue parka, better fitted than he’d normally bother with. It’s got a fake fur trimmed hood that he finds ridiculous, but had earned him a raised eyebrow of approval.

The deceptive heat of the low October sun cutting through a clear sky has vanished with sunset, the temp shift causing a pressure shift and a cold gusting wind as they make their way back to the truck under streetlamp light. She shivers in her thin sweater and pulls his coat from the bag, wrapping the extra material around herself like bundling in a comforter.

“Better?” He asks, left holding the bag.

“Mmmm,” she sighs, her breath stirring the fuzzy trim that catches the ends of her bright hair, lemon against the deep blue of the coat, and she gives him a wicked smile.

There’s an edge to the air that’s more than the brisk drop in temp, and Bruce feels lightheaded and unmoored. He wants to grab the hood and kiss that smile from her mouth, bruise her, bury himself in her. He wants to walk away before disaster strikes, while she still can look at him with that glorious thrum of want.

He stands there, looking at the fork in his own road.

~*~

Bruce is drinking coffee at the diner, reading his tablet and trying to figure out how to reply to Freida without sounding pissy and difficult when he should be radiating apologies and charm, when Nat slides into the booth across from him.

He's lost a day to logistics and correspondence, plus a few lazy hours of unexpectedly waking up to her, taking advantage, and it’s put him behind. Not much, catch-up is still doable, but he hates that he’s let it slide even that far. He learned a long time ago that he needs to stay on top of his schedule, his paperwork, finances, materials, keep things stocked and prepped. Things are starting to fray, he knows they are. Even if he didn’t, the way she watches him, shrewd and careful, is a big fucking clue.

“Bad news?” Nat asks

He shakes his head. 

He’s doesn’t really want to discuss this, in fact he came into town as a reason not to be in his workshop, to take the day to tackle this issue with Freida, assess his responsibilities, look hard at his state of affairs and draw up a list of business to take care of. Even if he doesn’t have the wherewithal just yet to do more than that, it’s important to look square at it.

Nat smiles at the waitress, gesturing for coffee, and there’s something about her sitting here, half turned toward him in this booth, like her presence is a given. Inevitable. And that’s a pretty lie, isn’t it? Has to be. It gnaws at him, tight and dark in his belly, rough in his throat, a cumulative coiling together of pressure and worry. That the commission will be rejected, that he’s risking fucking up this life he’s created.

He’s let Natasha matter to him. That’s not a new conclusion, but it looks foolish in the thin cold late autumn light struggling through the window. What was he thinking?

The stable supports Bruce has built for himself are only meant to bear his own weight, and require diligent shoring. He's spent most of the summer ignoring those foundations and doing whatever the fuck he wanted, following his dick instead of his routine. That he's happier than he's been in years just amps up the dread. That he wakes up craving her voice, her insight, her touch and her brilliance is just so dangerous for both of them.

He has a tendency to lean on people until he crushes them.

He doesn’t think he can lose everything again, go through another reconstruction, build his life up from a burned out shell once more. Fear and anger are the Janus heads, the versions of the same face, and both lead to someplace dark and ugly. Monsters in basements.

Something must cross his face, because she sits forward. “Bruce, seriously, is it bad?”

“No. I don’t know. The buyer’s agreed to take the Hydra, but it took a lot of persuading. There’s a hint of this being more trouble than it’s worth for Freida.”

Nat stirs in the sugar she always adds to her third or fourth coffee of the day. “Is it?” she asks, cocking her head. 

He shifts his shoulder, regretting even letting that much of his problems slip. He knows better, frankly, after what she‘s been doing to try to help him with Ellie, and when she reaches a hand toward his wrist, the monster flares, snarling, and he flicks it away.

Bruce doesn’t want pity, doesn’t want anyone bullshitting him. Most of all he doesn't want permission to bullshit himself, reaching for reassurance he neither deserves nor needs. He crosses his arms, leaning back in the booth, “Yeah, maybe it is too much trouble. Stupid at least. I should have followed the plans, made the original design, saved the fireworks for...I cannot afford to lose my agent because I did whatever the fuck I wanted.”

She’s left her hand stranded in the center of the table, curled in a loose fist. “Even if it’s good work? Brilliant, maybe?”

“Don’t.” He's sharper than he needs to be. “I don’t need--I’m not doubting the work...just my own judgement. I get to do that.”

She sits back and crosses her arms as well, her eyes flat and a little cold. “True. You get to be pissy and self-loathing if you want. Your prerogative.”

“Nat.” He’s hurt her feelings but she's not gonna say boo about it, her own defenses bristling. Good; they’re evenly matched in this as well. Fuck. “I have to deal with this. I made a bad call.”

“You took a risk. Freida’s not going to abandon you. She sees the potential in this new stuff, she just doesn’t want to make it easy on you.”

“I can’t take that chance.” She's still trying, he'll give her that. He wonders how many tries she'll give him. Wonders if he can keep from pushing her just to find out. “I can’t afford to be distracted. And I’ve been distracted. There’s no denying that.”

The blame is his, but she takes it on, her face twisting like she’s been slapped. He doesn't correct her, simply makes himself watch her shut down because it's probably better this way.

“I need to focus. Re-focus. And--”

“And what?” She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t look away. She’s going to make him say it.

“Look, I’m just not…” He looks at the sun, low and anemic even though it’s only three in the afternoon. “I get low. I get moody and difficult, and I’m just...I’m not good for the people around me, sometimes. Winter can be...bad. I just need to focus, get my shit together.”

“So what are you saying, Bruce?”

Well he came into town to take a hard look, to start taking care of business again, didn’t he? To shrug off the deflection and distraction while he still had some momentum, while he still cared enough about things to do the work. His wood pile is in terrible shape, and he hasn’t really looked at his pantry or freezer in months. There’s not much light left, and he’s still sitting in the diner nursing a bottomless cup of coffee not having gotten around to ordering lunch.

Pointless. He’s already risked blowing up his whole life, hasn’t he? For nothing. For an apology to Freida he hasn’t been able to write all day. For a to-do list as long as his forearm. For Natasha to look at him with angry hurt carefully checked behind an expression of indifference.

He unfolds and leans toward her, and lays his final card on the table. Naming the hopelessness is almost relief.

“Nat, what are you even doing here? Seriously. You’re going to leave. You’re going to find something that engages you, and you’re going to leave. You’re too bright and talented not to, and if I depend on you being here, it’ll get bad when you go. And I don’t know if I can really come back from that.”

The angry hurt is in her eyes, he realizes, the rest of her face is almost a mask but the eyes radiate pain and threat. Yet there’s an inexplicable hint of gentleness in her tone, and it tears at him when she asks, “Why don’t you let me decide if I’m going anywhere?”

“Natasha--”

“Don’t do either of us any favors, Bruce.” She lays her hands on the edge of the table, looking down at his coffee cup like she’s trying not to stab him with her eyes. “You think being alone is gonna help? Keep you on track? Make it all better?” She looks up, and her eyes are glassy and a little bloodshot at the edges. “Fuck that, Bruce--you’re barely feeding yourself these days. But I guess you’ve got a system, got it figured out, and I shouldn’t interfere.”

He swallows, and somewhere in there he lost his nerve for doing what he still thinks is the best thing to do. “Look, I’m leaving tomorrow for parent’s weekend. Let me just get through that, okay?”

She tilts her head like she’s assessing him and the situation both, and there’s a little shake of her head like she doesn’t have much of a choice. She slides back out of the booth and walks out the door.

~*~

Ellie’s dorm is four floors of 19th century brick with white trim, a far cry from the cement monstrosities of MIT or the apartment complexes of grad student housing. It looks like the kind of place you’d want your brilliant kid to change her life in. Or at least eat a lot of pot noodle while hammering out equations, and stay up all night philosophizing and smoking weed.

He rings the buzzer and pulls his coat around himself, shoving his hands in the pockets as he waits. She opens the door herself instead of buzzing him in, flanked by a tall girl with chocolate skin and exuberant hair, both of them in hoodies and jeans and boots.

“Aww, it’s the original moptop!”

“This is my roommate, Yvonne.” Ellie looks so flustered that she hugs him, and he hugs her back trying to gauge how long he can hold onto her without her shrugging out of his grip. He times it almost right.

Yvonne waves as Ellie straightens the collar of his coat. ”You’re on time. And you look...normal. You look good.”

Bruce knows better than to thank her, so he gives his best “Aw shucks.”

He can still smell Nat’s perfume in the fake fur trim, but he doesn’t have the bandwidth to think of that here. To think about the damage he’s probably done to that connection.

“There’s a reception,” Yvonne says, filling in the pause before it gets awkward. “My folks are just coming in from the city. They’ve been here before, so they’re skipping it, but Ellie said I could tag along with you guys instead. They make these shrimp puffs that they only bring out for parent’s weekend, and of course all the cheap wine you can drink.”

Bruce smiles at that. “Lead on,” he says. “Don’t want to keep anyone from shrimp puffs.”

~*~

Stuffed with shrimp puffs, they’ve reconvened in the back of a small pub that’s starting to fill up. Bruce thinks he should probably take his leave, let them finish their night here without the third wheel of Ellie’s old man.

“It was the saddest tree you’ve ever seen,” Ellie began laughing about the time Bruce realized what story she was telling.

He’s plastered on a chagrined half smile as Yvonne listens to Ellie’s jaunty rendition, drink poised for a sip but forgotten. He’s steadfastly ignoring the wash of shame and hoping like hell this is actually how Ellie remembers it. Maybe it’s part of the redefinition of college, or the softening of forgiveness.

“It leaned, and they couldn’t get it to stand up, and dad got so mad he threw it out into the lawn, just chucked the whole damn tree out into the snow and said ‘We’re cancelling Christmas!’”

Yvonne has given up on her drink, leaning hard on the table as she shakes with silent laughter that Ellie is milking with a vengeance.

“David was a baby, so he’s crying because everything’s so loud and weird, and I’m crying because I thought maybe you could actually do that, cancel Christmas, and mom’s yelling so much I can’t even understand what she’s saying and dad’s standing there in the snow in his socks like he’s gonna have to fight the tree, like he’s bounced a drunk out of a club or something.”

He nurses his soda and bitters, feeling frayed and on thin ice. He’d wanted to go back to the hotel, take a hot shower, regroup. Now he just wants to get out alive.

Yvonne is howling with laughter, “So what happened?”

“Dad?”

He’s mortified, but tries to play it off lightly, squaring up his cocktail napkin. “Your um--her mother made me haul it back in. I sawed off all the bottom branches until we found the bend in the trunk, that kept it from going upright, and then we had to prop it up in the corner.” Kneeling miserable on the icy porch, hands coated in pine pitch as he took it out on the tree with the saw, Betty watching from the doorway with David propped on her hip. “But then it only had branches from the middle up, so Ellie’s mom wrapped it in this big red ribbon and we shoved the presents under it, and just didn’t mention it again.”

Until Parent’s Weekend, in a bar with Ellie’s roommate. It’s forgiveness perhaps, but there’s enough penance thrown in that Bruce is happy to accept it. Ellie nudges her shoulder against his and says, “It kinda looked like a toadstool, actually.”

Yvonne’s laughter punctuates her charmed, “Awww,” and Ellie grins like this is a punchline instead of a punch to the gut.

Bruce tries to imagine a world where any of the miserable anecdotes from his own childhood could be spun into something hazy enough to pass for gold.

He finishes his drink and slowly stands. “Alright girls, I’m beat. Are you staying, or can I give you a ride back?” They elect to stay, Yvonne quick to reassure him about their transportation options to get back to campus, but Ellie walks him out.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she says. “I was nervous, but I’m glad.”

He hugs her quickly, in part because he’s not sure he can refrain from squeezing her too tightly, and also because she came out without her coat, cheeks flushed. “I love you,” he says, planting a kiss into her hair, underneath her shampoo that same Ellie scent from all the way back to the day she was born.

He shoos her back into the bar and darts through a knot of students on their way in, coughing his throat clear and carefully refraining from shoving any of the little bastards just because they’re in his way.

~*~

“What did you study again?” Natasha is following the double helix tapestry from base to top, and her head is nearly at a right angle to get a better look at the scene playing out on a vertical curve. “Is that…”

Darcy nods, “A female Viking ready to ply her partner with a giant dildo? Why yes, yes it is.”

Nat grins. The party was low-key, more of a casual get-together, the kind Nat imagines well-heeled arty students might have, and she’d thought about not coming, but she’s been curious to see the domestic set up Darcy, Thor and Jane have created in the big studio space over the Admiral's yarn store.

“My thesis was on the history of Nordic textiles and the reflection of hyper-local culture in the development of stitch patterns,” Jane says. “I’ve got an MFA, and a PhD in Cultural Anthro with a focus on fiber art and textiles in Scandinavia, mostly Norway, but you really have to have some knowledge of all of it - although you’d think Finland’s the same, but it’s not. It’s just…they are crazy people.”

Jane’s a little drunk on cheap red wine.

“So why making textiles and not just studying them? And also…” Nat points again at the pornographic scenes in front of her, a tantric temple’s worth of Vikings as doodled by Hieronymus Bosch.

Jane moves her mouth around like she’s trying to figure out how to describe it. Nat wants to tell her that she doesn’t have to dumb it down, she understands that gap between practical and beautiful, practice and theory, and besides she’s spent the summer in that liminal space of art and science, prosaic materials and sheer exuberant excess.

But Jane speaks before she can say any of that. “The more I studied it, the more I realized that you have to practice the art to understand it. Not just to read all the symbolism, but to really intuit the man hours involved in making some of this stuff. How your life is so immeasurably different when the only way to be warm is to make something to keep you that way, and you'll wear it and repair it for years, so you want those things to represent you, and your family and your village. And then I wanted to start creating my own version of that experience, but since I don’t have to make things to keep warm, it shifted into expressing my own cosmology and worldview. I didn’t just want to study an existing system, I wanted to understand the abstract and the nitty-gritty of how such a system evolves as a way of communicating.”

Jane’s art is largely composed of impractical visions made from practical materials, including this piece that takes DNA and fucking very, very literally. It’s subversive, and also lovely. Plus, she makes hats in the winter, tag ends from the yarn shop, her version of salt and pepper poultry.

“So your exploration of that experience involved a lot of...sex.”

Jane shrugs, then nods. “Recently,” she says. “Yes.”

“And Darcy represents you.”

Darcy doesn’t exactly roll her eyes, but she answers Nat’s quirked eyebrow. “I know it’s a weird match. Jane does residencies and lectures, and I try to keep Thor from setting stuff on fire, and in the meantime I manage the yarn and textile store for Nick. Her sex stuff has actually been an added bonus. People like the idea of Vikings boning. Plus, I’m trying to branch out in my clientele. I asked Bruce if he wanted to swap managers, back when it was still dinosaurs, maybe start making helmets and shields. He said no. But politely. You got any Scandinavian tendencies?”

“Strictly Russian and high-tech,” Nat says, and finishes off her beer.

“If they made practical things, it’d be different,” Darcy says, “but everything Thor creates is this ephemeral conceptual art, all about what you don’t see. Though Jane’s dirty tapestries might get into Architectural Digest, and there’s talk of her doing an ACM tour and working with a few small colleges as a visiting scholar. Plus, we’re sniffing around Haystack. It’d be a coup.”

“A coup in Maine,” Jane says, sourly. “But it’s only two weeks.”

That divide between artisan and artist is something that’s been tugging at Nat, because she’s pretty happy being one and not the other. A crafts-person, and not a visionary. She likes the mechanics of art, she likes the end result, but she’s just as proud of her practical applications, and was truly awed to look at Ethelred, hear her roar, and see how much more she was than a metal beast from a fairytale, this delicate, dangerous thing, clawed and pointed and beautiful. Untouchable, and yet so warm it would burn you. Monsters tamed, but not retracted. It’s the first time Nat can identify how much closer Bruce’s vision of his work is to Jane’s, as opposed to something like Peggy’s extraordinary furniture, aesthetically designed for function. 

In Peggy’s world, there was no point to a chair you couldn’t sit in, no matter how lovely. Nat loves the theoretical, but knows that at heart, she’s as ruthlessly practical as Peggy.

~*~

“You really want to be doing laundry?” Bruce asks as they load duffels and baskets into the rental car.

“Absolutely--we take it to the laundromat, do it all at once. I can wash my sheets and comforter in the same giant load.”

He’s really not in a position to judge linen hygiene. There are better than even odds that neither he nor Tony washed their sheets for a semester. Maybe more, if he’s honest. Rhodey was already prepping for his military career; his room was impeccable. Then when he and Betty started dating, they spent a lot of time in her room, and her room always smelled clean - like pine trees and dryer sheets.

“You seemed good, this summer,” Ellie says, looking out the car window. “Maybe having a girlfriend agrees with you.”

“It's not like that,” he says, because even if it were, how could it be now?

Ellie’s always been astute, shrewd and protective about her feelings, quietly frustrated by his. She sounds so much like Betty that the nostalgia cuts through him, that studied patience, “Maybe it should be.”

He shrugs.

“I liked her a lot better than the couponing.” She leaves it, telling him to make the next left, and he's grateful.

They spend the afternoon at the laundromat, which is warm and steamy and kind of soothing. She knocks out some chapters and essay questions while he revises some calculations based on a materials change and then does a few rough sketches for future projects. That most of them have an animatronic component isn’t lost on him. They don't talk about his love life or hers, but still, they talk. Books and music, her work, her friends. He know it's an edited version of her life, but it's still a version she's choosing to share, and he laps it up.

There’s a mixer tonight with her department, and then he’s taking her and Yvonne to dinner, brunch in the morning in the dining hall, then catching an early afternoon flight back.

~*~

The campus is quiet on a Sunday morning. He’d woken up early, gotten coffee, and decided to walk around on his own. It’s a far prettier campus than MIT, or the University of Illinois, but university campuses all have a similar feeling to them. Bruce walks through the spaces between buildings, sense memory making him dissociative - the burnt scent of fall leaves and mulch, the turn of the air, coffee roasting, laundry. A few students straggling out of dorms, heading to the dining hall. 

He and Tony had been practically kids in college, younger than Ellie, sparking off each other’s ideas, jostling along to breakfast on Sunday mornings after staying up all night, buzzing with theories and hypotheses, convinced that sleep did not apply to them.

He’d have been alone in the world if Tony hadn’t turned to him in the dining hall early that first semester and made a crack about tritium triggers that he hadn’t expected anyone to understand, just really aimed it toward Bruce as a dramatic aside, but Bruce had laughed so hard he sprayed toast crumbs, and Tony had turned back and really looked at Bruce...and then decided to like him anyway.

Years later, Betty had been Tony’s lab partner in Chem, which is how they met, bonding over the unstable element that was Tony. Bruce owed him not only loyalty, but his life in so many ways. Friendship had been such a tentative thing, so valuable, and even when he couldn’t summon up gratitude, when he was difficult and explosive, destruction all around him, Tony’d been there. Smart alecky but steadfast for those few who saw beyond the wall that money and pride and truly extraordinary talent had built around him.

Then Tony’s parents had died, and shortly after Rhodey had gotten his Congressional appointment into the Air Force Academy, and then they went without sleep because Bruce was hauling Tony home drunk most nights.

He got to be the stable one for a change, the one cleaning up the mess, the voice of reason echoing off the tile late at night.

Tony would reach a point of stupefied clarity and ask, “Why can’t I be sad?”

Bruce would think, maybe anger is a kind of grief after all, maybe he wasn’t a monster or at least he wasn’t alone, and he’d say, “You don’t have to feel anything, Tony.”

Tony would laugh furiously and puke heroically before falling into bed, and they both somehow kept up their grades that year.

It’s too early in Malibu, but it’s daytime in New York. Bruce isn’t sure which coast Tony’s on, but he takes the risk and calls him anyway.

Tony answers, voice all disbelief and gravel, “Seriously?”

“Did I actually wake you up? I didn’t think you slept.”

“First time for everything. But nah, just creaky this morning.”

“Remember when we specced out the logistics for the space elevator?”

Tony sounds like he’s rubbing his face. “Oh yeah. We stayed up for two days because we knew we could prove it could be done. The physics, the materials, even the proposal to dad for creating it. Not because we thought it was a good idea, but playing devil’s advocate was damned satisfying.”

“I’m at Parent’s Weekend.”

“How is that even possible?”

“Tony.”

“No, no, I know. I sent Ellie a StarkBook when she got accepted into the research project. I just don’t know how we got so old.”

Bruce is grateful that Tony asks that, not ‘How did we get here?’ But that’s an old road, and they’ve gone down it before, often together. “Not so old,” he says.

“It’s not the age, it’s the mileage?”

“That’s it, Sundance.”

“The fall gonna kill us?”

“Maybe.” Bruce looks around, at the campus awakening, at this place that looks like the seat of his failures, but is just a place - beautiful, and full of these bright people building new dreams. “Maybe not. There are days when I think it may even be a soft landing.”

“That’s practically optimism from you, big guy. Is the world shifting on its axis?”

“How are you, Tony?”

“You know - rich, famous, brilliant. Terrible.”

Bruce laughs. “I love you, Tony. Thank you.”

“Okay, it’s too early for existential, Bruce. Are you staying in the dorm? Have you been hotboxed?”

“I just wanted to touch base. It’s weird being on a campus, that’s all.”

“Well I’m hanging up so I can get back to sleep before the sun rises. Take care of yourself. Kiss the kids. Make some weird shit and send us photos. Pepper likes the dinosaurs. Maybe we should get one for the house here, have it look out over the ocean.”

“My work is...evolving. The dinos may be done.”

“I’ll let Pep know your dino period has concluded. We negotiated the equal division of household chores; I do all motor pool maintenance while she handles all art acquisition and curation.” He hangs up.

Bruce sits on a bench outside of the Physics building. In a different universe somewhere, maybe he’s a normal guy, stable family life, bright but not exceptional, with a solid university position, house in the professor’s corridor, spending his days explaining Newtonian laws and advocating for experimental research. Calm, mellow, part of a bowling league. Of course, maybe in another universe he’s something worse, more broken.

But in this one, there are possibilities he’s throwing away, and he wants to salvage them. He just isn’t sure where to start, if he’s even he’s capable of it. He’d seen himself, all the way back in early September, spiraling a little, drowning in the choking worry of potential failure, of inspiration thwarted by self-imposed circumstance. The things he’d been creating had felt so…big, the collaboration and connection with Nat so heady, even as the destruction of those things had dangled over him until his brain had finally chimed in, reminded him of the inevitability of failure. 

It’s a feeling he recognizes with enough clarity to earn the worry, reminiscent of those years when his research had gone fallow as he’d struggled through teaching and administrative duties, failing at those, at his marriage, parental responsibilities.

Those failures, whatever the mitigating circumstances, had been real.

The Physics building looms at him pointedly, and he gets up, heads towards the library they’d toured yesterday. It’s a ways away, but he’s got time and he welcomes the walk in the crisp air, dying leaves crunching under his feet. He knows some of the worry is self-sabotage, years of therapy and the accompanying self-realization, living in a good headspace have all given him the tools to know that depression is a liar, makes you see things at their worst. But there’s never a true cure-all for it, and the highs always have the accompanying lows. Nature requires balance.

Even with tools, you still see the disaster, you’re just supposed to pull out your hammer and smash it. But his toolbox for self-care is still mostly for day to day maintenance, and it never included a guidebook for what to do when a type of happiness you weren’t even looking for walks up to you and shakes hands, critiques your work and offers to make it better with a dazzling grin and ferocious curiosity. It doesn’t include what to do when your own brain starts to betray you because you’re fried out on worry, too little rest, the precarious place you’ve put your security into by chasing ephemera like inspiration and desire.

He’d burned hot this summer, fueled by deep pleasure and satisfaction, expansive terrifying contentment. He’d also gotten more sleep than usual, mainly conked out against Nat like a colicky baby giving in to exhaustion, but still, enough to make him leery of dependency. Needing someone else offers up the unpredictable, takes away the control, leads to destruction when that person realizes he’s not worth the effort. When he proves that to be true.

It’s so much better to break things himself than let them break around him. As a way to assert control, reckless self-destruction can be glorious right up until you hit the wall.

Fuck. He shakes his head, gets a cagey look from a couple of young men with scarves and backpacks, walking with their hands in each other’s pockets as one leans protectively into the other. There’s such a warm ease to their attraction and care, and he’s inadvertently intruded on it. Tainted it a little this morning. He lifts his hand, gives them a smile that might not be that reassuring.

He sees the possibility of true destruction looming in the distance, even if there’s a matching possibility next to it that looks like something akin to hope. In the diner, he’d looked that hope in the face, and told it to go fuck itself, and he regrets it, but he’d been running so hard towards hope, he’d ignored the hard work and discipline that bolsters him. Ignored that he’s always balancing resource and choice – that keeping himself afloat professionally, prepping to present his best self to his daughter had maybe taxed those resources and he’d missed the window of asking for support, acknowledging that he needed it during that time.

He watches the boys with the backpacks as they meet up with another couple, stop so one of them can light up a cigarette. He sees the ribbing that kid gets from his friends, the goodnatured policing. When he’s not here, Ellie undoubtedly enacts her own version of that kind of ritual on the weekends, and that soothes him somehow.

He hasn’t failed there, not completely. That’s something. An example, maybe, if he can hold on to it, take her forgiveness as something he has finally earned.

He’s not sure what is waiting for him at home, just enough time to repack and maybe knock out restacking the wood for this winter, which is still on the far side of the lot, before it gets much colder, then heading back out to do the install of the Hydra that no one knows what to do with. No real time to soothe, mend, explore this rift. Part of him thinks it’s for the best, let the rift expand, eradicate the bridge between them.

But he’s not willing to give into that. Not yet, even if he doesn’t know how to fill things back in.

Bruce keeps going towards the library, passing by the student store, which has a big window display of college paraphernalia intended to entice parents. His own ancient MIT sweatshirt has earned him a ration of shit from Nat, even when he’d found her wearing it as the chill of fall crept into the air at night. Maybe it’s time to replace it.

 

~*~

Nat knows Bruce is home, wood smoke and the lights on late that night, but she’s not going to push. She can wait him out. She’s got stuff to do. A life to lead.

Modules to improve for the robotics class. A worktable to finish, if she’s really going to show it at the WrekerWerks Salon after the holidays. Stitch n’ Bitch tomorrow because she's promised Jane to at least try to learn crochet. She can pretend that she doesn’t give a fuck about Bruce’s parent weekend, his next installation and his to-do lists and his cold feet. It’s really not that hard.

It’d be easier if it were true, but she’s done worse. Been worse.

The sheen on her kitchen floor has nothing to do with anger. Not a goddamned thing. She was just sick of looking at the worn linoleum the Liebers had probably installed before she was born, Lichtenstein patterned dots in a palette Peggy had described as ‘nicotine stains and lime’. Now her hands are pruny and her knees ache, and she wonders when she lost the ability to shove emotions like this aside, swallow them down, move on.

Maybe it’s because she doesn’t have to keep moving. Maybe there’s a strange luxury in standing one’s ground, even if that ground is tiled with a pointilist rendition of beer piss on dying grass. She tosses the brush into the bucket in disgust. At least the cabinets are good.

She hasn’t always done the leaving - she’s been left, and not just when she’s jabbed and drawn blood and forced the issue - but this doesn’t feel like either one and it picks at her. That conversation in the diner, the way he’d talked himself out of this thing between them right when she was starting to look at it as more than a fling. It bugs her. It’s confounding. It hurts.

He’s been frustrated, and frustrating; he’s surprisingly deft at multi-tasking. The thing is, it’s clear that he’s pushing her away when he wants the opposite; he’s punishing himself. She wants to punch him, wants to take him to bed and fuck some sense back into him. but neither of those is the answer.

The question, of course, is what she’s going to do about it. Accept his words, say fuck him, move on? Read into the gestures, the months of care and companionship and lust and forgive him? Persuade him? Flee? Or fight? 

In the end, she's always been a bruiser. Everyone she's ever loved has the scars to prove it.

Erik tools up her driveway later that same day and delivers a package - a burnt orange zip up Princeton hoodie with a note on the manifest that just says, “Parent’s Weekend.”

Erik still mixes up the packages some days, but this one has her address on it. She puts it on over her pajamas and drinks coffee on her couch, thoughtful. 

~*~

The crocheting isn’t going very well. Nat’s made a series of long ragged chains of uneven loops, then unraveled them, then knotted them again in increasingly complex stitches. She’s decided that, at best, making loops of yarn isn’t for her, but it is kind of hypnotic.

Nick is making a fishing net in a metallic blue with artful tears and found objects woven in. It’s the most literal thing she’s ever seen and she kind of loves it. She looks forward to seeing it displayed somewhere.

Still, she’s fulfilled her promise to attend the Stitch N’ Bitch prior to Jane going to Minneapolis for her next residency interview. Darcy has in turn brought homemade cherry cider, courtesy of Thor’s recent experiments with fermentation, and tiny pies to send Jane off in style.

“Intro to Search and Rescue, plus CERT training starts next month,” Nick winds invisible fishing line around a seashell, and attaches it to a square in the faux-net.

“Had that in San Francisco,” she says. “Earthquake preparedness.”

“Well,” he says, “fewer earthquakes here. More dumb-ass tourists falling off boats, or locals misjudging ice and thaw ratios. Broken legs at the bottoms of dunes. Some interesting weather. Keeping people safe or dealing with the aftermath.”

She tilts her head. This is also a literal interpretation of doing good. She’s surprisingly intrigued. 

“Come to the first class,” he says. “Bet you’ll stay.”

Later, eating the tiny pies, Thor confirms that most of them have been guilted into the CERT training. No one says no to Nick when he gives them that stare, although Jane tried. “I’m too busy,” she says, but gives in reluctantly after getting a limpid-gazed plea from Thor.

Nat walks out with Nick, although she’s not sure who’s looking out for whom. “You’ve got that look,” he says, “Like nothing throws you. The rest of them, well, not a lot of practical life skills. CERT’s good for thinking about first aid, and not blowing your hand off with a firecracker, and knowing how to use a fire extinguisher. I like increasing the lifespan of the local population.”

Nat barks out a laugh at that.

“But you,” he continues, with a certain amount of affection. “You look like you can do some good.”

“That’s a strange assumption,” she says, “given you’ve heard the bar fight story.”

“Not really,” he holds open the door of the Probe for her. “You can make a hard call, and you’ve got follow-through. So why not? Wilson says you’re strong, agile, sometimes second guessing him in class. You’re analytical, quick, helped the EMTs get better at their jobs. And clearly, since you’re still here as winter rolls in, you’re not afraid of a challenge.”

“Not one for letting people arrive at their own decisions, are you Admiral?”

“Retired. I get impatient waiting for obvious conclusions to play out.” he taps on her door, nodding as she starts the engine. “Drive safe, Romanoff.”

~*~

The Hydra is the terror of the koi pond, facing off against Ethelred in an epic battle. The buyer is clearly unsettled, really only engaging with Freida even while Bruce stands there trying to look as congenial as possible, but then he immediately calls everyone he knows to come view it, an impromptu party that he invites Bruce to, a brief acknowledgement.

Freida takes him to a late breakfast once the piece is installed. She orders a spinach and egg white scramble while he picks at chilaquiles, and she promises to sort through any potential business that comes out of the frenzy. “First, you have to attend the party. It’s what we want, people to see your work in a new context. I know we’ll get a few more commissions.”

He takes a deep breath. “I'm not sure I want to take any more commissions for the spring.”

Freida crosses her arms. “Bruce, it’s much harder finding buyers for original pieces. You know this.”

“You said before that you could find them.” The change in time zone and weather are unnerving, the light hazy, and he finds his muscles are reluctant to relax in the southern California warmth, still braced to meet the cold waiting for him at home.

“For your work with Romanoff, yes. I can, ideally, for those pieces and for stuff more in line with this new direction. But you need to know that it will be less consistent, more feast and famine. I’m not sure how comfortable you are with that kind of uncertainty. I’m willing to take the risk, but I need to know you’re committed. That you can be consistent, communicative. You’re probably not going to be able to hibernate in the winter. It’ll mean grant applications, possibly more speaking engagements. Residencies.”

He nods. “Okay, I...let me think about it.”

She reaches out like she’s going to put her hand on his, but changes course at the last minute, takes the salt and shakes it over the already seasoned eggs.

“It’s a lifestyle change, switching from artisan to artist. I think you’re ready, but I’m not the one who has to live it, you know?”

~*~

Natasha has spent years sleeping with her phone within reach. Even now that she hasn’t been on call for over a year, it’s been the hardest habit to break, her only concession being to disable the email notifications.

So when the text comes through at three in the morning she’s got it cued up in front of her before she opens her eyes. She has to blink before the dark and glimmering scene resolves, the first of a string of pictures coming through from an unknown number.

The first is the bloodlust of the Hydra framed by Ethel’s sharp teeth, back-lit by tiki torches. The rest is a slideshow of wealth and monsters battling for supremacy in the serenity of a California billionaire’s backyard. Nat recognizes an ingenue, and an investor whom she’d met with at one point, eventually rejecting his offer. It concludes with a photo of Bruce at an awkward angle, hair all over the place, champagne glass still full. Freida must have taken them; it’s not like Bruce’s flip phone has enough memory for this much high-res data.

A text from Bruce’s number follows after a minute, “Wish you were here.” Then. “That’s a lie. I wish I were there.”

It’s not an apology, or an acknowledgement. But it’s a truth. She can work with that.


	9. Homework

Homework

When Laura calls, all Nat registers is the hollowed out sound of her voice, and it feels like she’s dropping in an express elevator as she stands in her living room, mug in hand.

What she hears is, _Clint’s dead_ , and it’s only when Laura snaps her name, “Nat!” that she really parses what Laura’s actually been saying, “Did you hear me? _Clint’s been hurt_.”

She mops up the spilled tea as Laura fills her in. He’s been evacuated to a hospital in Germany, and is set to arrive in the states in a couple days, barring any complications. Sniper fire, a lucky shot from extreme distance, even luckier for Clint because the bullet had already expended a lot of energy before tearing into his thigh. It broke the bone but left the artery intact, which is why he didn’t bleed out where he stood.

Nat interrupts, “Bleed out where? Where was he even at this time?”

It’s an old argument, and one that particularly stings because Nat is pretty damn sure she could find out with some digging, but getting caught would mean prison, and the very information she’d be after would be like signing the crime.

Laura’s strained exhale is a warning, she’s in no mood to indulge this argument even in passing, “There’s muscle damage, but it’s pretty mild compared to what that kind of round normally does, once the bone can bear weight he’ll do therapy, maybe have a limp, that’s what I’ve heard so far, I won’t really know until I can meet up with him, either stateside or at Landstuhl…”

In less than an hour she’s packed enough for a couple weeks’ stay, to watch the kids while Laura brings Clint home to Virginia, to help get him settled into rehab, or at least home and unpacked.

He’s alive. Laura has talked about how getting him home safe doesn’t mean the danger is necessarily over, but it’s a damn sight better than people actively shooting at him in unknown locations around the world.

She gets in the car an hour later, determined not to bring the Probe back, one way or another.

Halfway through the drive, just past Cleveland, she calls Bruce from a rest plaza on the tollway.

“I need you to keep an eye on the house while I’m gone.”

“I see.” He sounds distracted, distant. “You, ah...you should winterize it properly, you don’t want your pipes to freeze. Your real estate agent could get you some references--”

“Bruce, shut up. That’s not the situation.” Nat finds herself explaining, words coming out unedited and throaty with unchecked emotion, like the part of her that keeps track of how she comes across with other people has shorted out, perhaps in a puff of astringent blue smoke that spells out you’re dumping. She doesn’t so much reign it in as peter to a stop. “I’ll be gone a couple weeks, I think, that’s all.”

“Oh.” There’s a rustle, and she hears the close warmth of sound that means she’s no longer on his shitty flip phone speaker, that he’s picked it up and laid it against his ear. “But he’s alright?”

“More or less; he’s called Laura, she says he sounds tired but okay. He’s coming home for good.”

“That’s good, I’m glad to hear it. How are you doing with this?”

Nat clenches her jaw against the gentleness in his voice, the acknowledgement that good news after so much time worrying doesn’t feel cheerful, it just feels like the fear is something you can actually begin to feel, because now you can put it away afterward. She swallows past the thickness in her throat.

“Nat?”

She watches a family of five stumble out of an SUV and blearily scout the sunny parking lot, the father corralling the teens toward the service plaza while the mother makes a phone call in rapid-fire Arabic peppered with English. It has the taste of decompressing after hours in the car.

“Natasha?”

“Well,” she says instead of answering, “you know.”

“Yeah.” He clears his throat, maybe in sympathy with the catch in hers. “So bring in your mail?”

The woman starts laughing, resolution, pacing slowly toward the stretch of dry grass and picnic tables.

“Probably you should use up my milk.”

“Here’s my question; you don’t seem like the kind of person who leaves her door unlocked, or hides a spare under a rock, so who out here has your house key?”

“You will,” she says, partway between a question and an answer, pulling her tablet to look up nearby shipping services. “Say hi to Erik for me.”

“You’re going to send me a key, overnight, to make sure your milk doesn’t go to waste? Or did you get a plant or a fish I don’t know about?”

“No, just the groceries. Feel free to eat out my fridge til your heart’s content.”

He chuckles.

~*~

A freshly ground key arrives along with a cold snap and a note asking him to contact Sam about her robotics class. It’s signed with her initial, and a thank you. Impersonal for all the weight behind it. 

The new key sticks partway in the lock and won't turn. Bruce yanks it free with a sigh.

He plucks his pencil from his shirt pocket, clicking out an inch of lead. He breaks the lead off into the keyhole and proceeds to wiggle and slide the key to grind it into graphite powder. The subtext is not lost on him, as he gently fucks the lock action smooth until the door opens and lets him into where she lives.

"So there's that," he mutters, stepping into her kitchen.

Her house is too quiet without her in it. Bruce stands in the kitchen, thin mid-day sunlight shining through the windows, and nudges the tap on to a slow drip.

He should call Jim, see about getting her storm windows installed.

He’s not sure if that thought should feel like a violation or an obligation - instead it just feels right. She’s deep into the trade routes now, and he doesn’t want to negotiate on her behalf. However, he suspects that she’s already got some sort of shifty side agreement worked out with Bob based on the fact that winter greens keep appearing in his grocery order even when he’s sure he didn’t ask for them, along with the bacon that serves as the base for the cowboy chili. 

He feels like a voyeur, being here without her, like he’s eavesdropping, glimpsing something hidden. But it’s only her home, left in a bit of disarray in her hurry to get to her family, the house holding its breath, waiting for her to return.

It’s nothing she hasn’t shown him, opened up to him as she’d filled it with warmth and character. He indulges for a minute, sits on the green couch and lets himself spin out one type of worst case scenario - what it’d look like if she really were gone, if he were simply here to check in on the pipes and the furnace and forward her mail. If he were just a good neighbor. It chokes him a little, how empty that feels.

He gets up, turns on the sink in the bathroom to a slow drip, checks the furnace and sets the heat to 58 since Nat doesn’t have any inside plants. He catches sight of her bedroom from the open door, bed unmade like always, robe thrown hastily over the chair in the corner. 

They’ve been so very careful with each other since he got back from California, trying to figure out what to repair and what to rebuild and what had actually been true all along. He craves her presence, her focus and attention, but it’s shadowed by guilt and doubt, the creeping nihilism that comes in winter that he can’t shake even when he knows better. 

And yet...he still gets greens in his delivery basket, a phone call in the midst of disaster, and a key to this home she’s building.

It terrifies him, that she hadn’t walked away when he expected her to, because it warms him through, stokes his longing. It’s a boon he doesn’t deserve, shouldn’t be given, will only ruin, considering the effort it takes sometimes to keep from believing that the deep truth of life is that it’s all pointless. The struggle itself starts to feel like pressure on a bruise, everything good he’s trying to keep a grip on feels like unavoidable loss, and he starts to just want it over with so he can sleep.

He clenches his fingers around the house key, and he makes a promise to himself to respect the work she’s put into making her home here, the trust he’s been given.

~*~

Nat has begun to repeat her culinary repertoire, but she’s also fed the kids at home with semi-regularity, something she hadn’t thought to be grateful for until the third time she’d had to bundle two restless kids and a toddler in and out of a minivan.

“No more soup,” Lila declares that morning with tears in her eyes, but she’ll still gobble down grilled cheese and buttered noodles with broccoli... as long as it isn’t macaroni, Nat’s fine with it. She ate too damned much macaroni as a kid, because it was fast and cheap and was a staple in the food boxes they’d get sometimes. Tunafish she can still choke down, but even Cooper knows Aunt Nat will only make the mac & cheese with the little shell pasta...and if they’d all eaten DQ sundaes last night for dinner with a side of baby carrots, everyone in the room had been sworn to secrecy on pain of eating pizza yet again.

They’re tooling around the grocery store, grabbing some family-sized lasagnas and a couple more bags of frozen mixed veg, putting back - for the sixth time - the box of Cocoa Puffs because she’s enforcing some standards, when her phone dings.

She’s heard from Bruce twice - a text to let her know he got the key, and an early morning photo of the snow on the lake from his tablet that she thinks was probably spur of the moment. No message, just that quiet and beautiful shot framed by his living room window sill, and when she looks at it, it makes her feel uncomfortable. Like she should be there. Like longing for bed without being tired. She wants to hear his voice, thinks about calling, to hear him say her name, murmur in her ear, but that seems so indulgent. She misses him, and that feels indulgent too.

The text is from Angie, something about storm windows and Paypal and a security system app that Bob’s brother Jim recommended installing along with the windows. She texts, _Have Jim email me the quote, I’ll sign off and send payment, don’t know when I’ll be back yet. Does someone need to be there for the install?_

Angie replies, _It’s taken care of. Don’t worry about it._

~*~

Nat is curled up in the arm chair with Lila crashed out in her lap, just staring at Clint, who looks like he was thrown onto the couch from a great height, but who’s nonetheless arrived safe in his own house.

She knows he’s not sleeping well; he’s got a seventeen inch titanium nail holding his femur together but he doesn’t take the meds until the pain is screaming at him, and you can’t get on top of it that way. His leg is elevated on Laura’s thigh, knee slightly bent in a hinged brace. Laura’s head lolls against Cooper’s, her eyes closed while the boy pages through a graphic novel.

Clint has dark circles under his eyes, which makes his comment come off like a prophecy of doom. “You gotta get double-glazed windows.”

“Back off. My house. My windows.”

“Damned hippy artists, what are they gonna know about winter?”

She doesn’t rise to the bait, cutting him slack for being cranky. “They live there year round, must have figured something out. There’s a lot of Dutch pragmatism in the area.”

Clint holds on to the silence for a minute, and then says, “Maybe we’ll come for Christmas, let the kids see what snow really looks like.”

It’s been years since they had him at the holidays, and tears prick at her eyes. She wants to throw something at him; biting words, a pillow, anything, but somehow their typical banter has gotten lost in the space between the fear of loss, and the gratitude of averted disaster.

“Yeah,” she says instead, “I’d love that.”

“Had a dream,” Laura murmurs, “That we sold your stupid soap dish of a car and went to Hawaii. It was beautiful.”

“That car’s a classic,” Clint says. “An icon.”

Nat shakes her head, “Let’s be real, it would maybe cover your airfare.”

~*~

“My PT is a sadist. Let’s play hooky and get burgers.”

Nat rolls her eyes.

Clint is in the back of the minivan next to the car seat because it’s easier than the front, and even getting into the Probe is a therapy goal down the line. He’s got one hand wrapped around the oh-shit handle, the other clenched on the armrest.

“Jesus Christ, Nat, speed limits are there for a reason.”

“I’m _going_ the speed limit, you baby. And your PT has to be a hard ass because you are a hard ass. Also, if I were going to let you play hooky, it’d be for something better than burgers. Maybe Ethiopian. Vietnamese--oh god, or sushi. I can’t tell you how much I miss sushi.”

“Then move out of East Bumfuck. Come out here, work for the government. Don’t laugh, you know you could. Go to LA or New York, work for Stark. Move to Chicago.”

She parks the van and helps him out, walking beside and a little behind him with her hand hovering near his belt. He’s wobbling less on the crutches.

“Motherfucker, you’d think it wouldn’t hurt so much after just a 20 minute drive.”

“Sorry,” Nat says, and means it.

“Just bitching,” and his tone’s equally gentle.

The physical therapist, Manpreet, is a dark haired young woman with a no-nonsense attitude about sucking it up that Nat appreciates.

“Alright Barton,” she says, “you been doing your exercises?”

He gives her the limpid charm that only works on kids and the gullible and says, “Of course.”

Manpreet looks at Nat who wiggles her outstretched hand in a so-so motion. Nat’s on the list of people Clint’s okayed for medical info, and though he bitches about being sold out, he hasn’t changed that form. “Well, we’ll soon find out.”

Clint’s sweating about five minutes in, face grey with pain.

“That all you got, Barton?” Manpreet supports his thigh from the side, shuffling crab style while Clint grits his teeth and makes his way through the walking bars.

“Not even close Nurse Ratchet.”

“Oh please, that’s not even original. Also, I have a doctorate in making you feel like this.” When he gets to the end she comes around and talks to him low, laying down the law about how he’s really going to make progress, while Nat looks at a poster of spinal anatomy and files everything away to tell Laura.

“I have good news and bad news.” Manpreet gives Clint a break, helps him onto a big low table for a different set of exercises. “The good news is that you can’t outrun me right now.”

“Isn’t that the bad news?” 

“My good news is your bad news, Barton. Hip raises, hop to.”

“You’re a riot,” he says, sour, but there’s not a lot of heat in it.

~*~

Nat runs them through Fatburger on the way home, a turkey burger and a chocolate shake for Clint, snagging his fries out of the bag as she passes it back.

“What happened to sushi?” he asks.

“Fuck sushi,” she says. “I can live without sushi. But I can’t…”

“Nat,” he says, “don’t get maudlin.”

“When have you ever known me to get maudlin?”

“I’ve never known you to do a lot of things you’re doing.”

“That’s some bullshit, Clint.”

He tilts his head back against the seat, shake in his hand, fiddling with the straw.

“Yeah,” he says, “Maybe.” He pauses. “Laura sent me photos of everybody this summer. I mean, I know you’ve showed me stuff on Skype, but you never show me anything but scenery, like you want me to case the place. She sent me people photos. You and the kids, you know.”

She waits him out, looking at him through the rearview mirror instead of turning around because she knows him well enough to know he doesn’t want eye contact.

“When I first got shot, that first moment, when it’s just pain and heat and stupid fucking miserable luck I kept thinking, _Well, they can go there. Live with Nat. She’ll take care of them_. Don’t know why, but it just made sense.”

“Fuck you, Clint.”

“I know kid. Really.”

She leans her chin against the steering wheel, and then looks at him under her arm. “I would have,” she says softly. “You know I would. I will. We promised a long time ago.”

He reaches forward, hand on her shoulder, and she knows it must hurt like hell--the angle of the bend, but he rests his hand there until they’ve both soaked up their fill.

~*~

Bruce mutters dark and horrible things all the way to the front door, and unlocks and swings it open in one swift jerk that’s faster than he’s moved in days.

The person knocking like a drum solo has not only opened the screen door to lay knuckles on bare wood, he’s also partially wedged into the doorway to escape the bitter cold, and pops into Bruce’s living room like a jack in the box, already talking.

“So I said to Pep, _that can’t be right, that’s Bruce’s address_. And she says, _no, Bruce is at 627, this is 629_ , and then JARVIS verified it because he sends a thank you note every month for the panties, and then I find a Vine of something that looks like your work, but breathes fucking fire, and you are holding out on me, my friend. You’re collaborating with my business frenemy Romanoff.”

Bruce blinks at the bright white winter sky, the crust of snow in the corners of his yard, and the cherry red Tesla parked in his driveway. He sighs, and closes the door.

“I don’t want to assume that men and women can’t be platonic friends - my own history notwithstanding - so when I say this, understand it’s based on how cagey you’ve been about this recent development, which is not your style when speaking strictly professionally, so I’m taking a leap here, justified not by misogyny, but by fact that you two together kind of scare me and so it’s probably true and possibly also why I only found out via upgrading my goddamned Christmas List algorithm--you’re seeing her too, aren’t you?”

Bruce does not say _maybe_ or _not recently_ or _I have no idea what this is except a bad idea I can’t shake_. He says, “I’m making coffee,” and wanders into his kitchen.

When he gets back Tony still has his coat on, gazing longingly at the fireplace and the full stack of wood next to it. There are ashes that need to be scraped out, have been for a week, and Bruce gets that maybe it’s uncomfortable in the house. Too cold. His fingers ache a little now that he thinks about it. He sighs, goes over to the hearth. 

He sweeps out the ashes, lays the kindling. Lights the fire.

Tony’s poured them coffee by that point, very strong and liberally doctored with sugar and milk. He waits until Bruce washes his hands and has some of the coffee before raising his mug in toast fashion and says, “I’m stepping down from SI.”

Bruce is startled. “What do you mean, stepping down?”

Tony waves his hand, like it’s nothing. “Just as CEO. I’m still gonna lead R&D, I’m still the primary stockholder. I just...needed a change. Formally. I nominated Pepper, and the board has approved it. She’s already been doing most of the heavy lifting.”

“Tony…”

He looks around at the house. “You been taking care of yourself?” he asks, deflecting, and Bruce shrugs because he doesn’t lie to Tony.

“Winter,” he says. “I’m doing okay, I think. But…” He waves it off and gestures back to the point at hand.

Tony rubs his sternum. “Heart surgery,” he says finally. 

“It’s serious, isn’t it, if you’re seeing doctors about...well, anything.”

“I’m getting better about that. Pepper insists on routine maintenance.” Tony shrugs. “And I don’t want to end up like Obie, you know? Built like an ox, looked completely fine, but his heart grew three sizes and it turns out they don’t work so well like that.”

“Didn’t help that he smoked like an oil refinery.”

“Also a big fan of cocaine, turns out.”

“You know, I was going to say that explained the embezzlement, but even Obie couldn’t absorb that much coca.”

“Right? The things you find out when someone unexpectedly keels over on their desk blotter...So, this is just a rhythm thing, it goes dodgy, so they’re going in to tweak the nerves, keep that wiring quirk from killing me. I’ll also get a more permanent defib unit installed--”

“Jesus, Tony, you’ve got a pacemaker?”

“Not a pacemaker, a defibrillator.” Tony opens two shirt buttons and flashes Bruce the lump under his collarbone, just under the skin. “Monitors my heartbeat, gives me a poke of juice if it doesn’t like what it sees. Went off once in the hospital, it’s like a kick in the chest. Pretty nifty, actually, kind of reassuring to feel it flutter, then lurch, then chug back to normal.”

Bruce shakes his head, wondering at the things that Tony makes a big deal of, what he pretends to take in stride, and what he truly doesn’t give a rat’s ass about.

“Anyway, the press found out and stocks plummeted. The docs had recommended less stress anyway, and I wanted to go back to research. I’m out here hiding from the press, which is why I’m here without Pepper. Thought about heading to DC to hang with Rhodey, but well, the last time I testified in front of congress it was kind of a circus. And no one comes out here, because why the fuck would they?”

“When’s the surgery Tony? And what can I do?” He puts down the coffee, and leans in towards his friend. He owes him so very much, can’t ever repay it.

“Let me hang out in the spare room for a few days and keep me from dying of boredom.”

“I think I have a project that you won’t find too taxing.”

“Good. Great. And stop avoiding my earlier question. Romanoff? What’s the deal there?”

“Yeah, I’m tabling that for now.”

~*~

Laura’s sister’s house is full of people and food and football, so full that Nat can safely disappear, except it’s pouring rain outside and the only place to hide is the half-remodeled guest bathroom that doesn’t have a working toilet. So she locks herself in and lounges in the big empty jacuzzi tub with a plastic wineglass of two buck Chuck.

She props her stocking feet on the edge, dialing Bruce.

His voice cracks a yawn on her name when he answers.

“Hey,” she says, “Happy Thanksgiving. Did I wake you up?”

“Nah, just drowsy. Cold out today. I’ve been finishing the chicken molds out in the workshop.”

The silence stretches out and she feels foolish for calling, equally foolish because she likes knowing he’s there on the other end. So much they haven’t really worked out, so many things unnamed but none of that ambiguity checks the warmth spreading through her.

“You okay?” he asks. “Everything all right?”

“I’m sitting in an empty bathtub because there’s seven kids under ten running around this house, and Laura’s sister is great, but kind of a lot, and Clint’s pissy because his leg hurts and he’s bored out of his skull.”

He laughs,“That sounds kind of nice.” 

“It kind of is, particularly with the door locked. I feel like a teenager, hiding to call a boy.”

“Coincidentally, Tony’s visiting while he hides from the press, so I think it’s not exaggerating to say I feel your pain. I’ve been staked out in the workshop most of the day even though it’s freezing, so I can have some peace and quiet.” His chuckle is lower, rich, like he’s really waking up now. 

“Bruce, it’s Thanksgiving. You two going to sit around and stare at each other, or do you hopefully have plans?”

“We’re going to Peggy’s, actual dinner time. She refuses to have turkey, but there’s still pie and gratitude.”

“Good,” she says. He doesn’t need her approval, but she doesn’t like the idea of him alone, lost to the world while other people celebrate. Not when he doesn’t have to be.

“It should be fun. Tony’s promised to be on his best behavior.”

“So Stark, huh? How’s that going? Feeling like a teenager again yourself?”

“You have no idea. Although we haven’t blown anything up since he got here, and I haven’t seen his bare ass when it should have been covered, so that’s a welcome change.”

“I bet you two were a riot at that age.”

“We were younger than everyone around us. We were awkward, but thought we knew everything, and we were...I don’t know. We were kids. We thought dumb shit was funny, and we liked explosions. We were… as normal as the two of us were ever gonna be.” He leaves unspoken the weight of grief and expectation that must have hung over both of them, prodigies, tragedies, thrown into a sea of young adults.

There’s a tenderness in his tone, and she feels it for them both, for Bruce, those same dark eyes in a face all awkward angles and uncomfortable glances, for Stark with a mouth she’s sure must have gotten him into trouble constantly, not even minimal boundaries or discipline on his worst tendencies.

She lets herself be jealous, just for a moment, that they’d found each other, friendship and support, steering each other true.

“So,” Bruce pauses, and his tone shifts into gentle curiosity, the change in subject equally obvious. “I’m guessing teenage Nat ran roughshod over the boys.”

She’s cautiously curious where he’s going with this. “They called me, yeah.”

“Not surprised.”

“All full of things I just had to hear, promises they couldn’t keep, always wanting something, dying to talk to me, needing to see me. I found it all...I wasn’t very nice. So, maybe I did ride a little roughshod.”

Diversions, distractions, practicing the holds she’d had over them, and she hadn’t meant to be cruel. Of course she hadn’t meant not to be. 

“You’d have certainly eaten me alive.” There’s a wryness to Bruce’s tone now. “Although I doubt I’d have summoned the courage to actually call you.”

“Think that would have kept you safe?” Thing is, he’d have been the type she’d have sought out. She never went for the flashy ones, the pretty, confident types who always thought they had a right to her interest or affection, the charmers, the polished scions. She always sought like for like, fell for the troubled, with raw need buried under layers of damage, or insouciance, or brains.

Bruce would have been on the shortlist, even then. James was the only one who’d ever charmed her, but she’d already felt how he was broken underneath, just like she was. It wasn’t until she grew up that she tried to find solace and joy in the upstanding, the passionate, the kind of man the best of those boys turned into; the ones who fixed themselves, like Steve.

But those men also wanted to fix her, make her world better, shift her perspective. Turns out she’d never really wanted or needed a different view. What she wants is someone to embrace the fucked up parts of her, who’ll say, _We’ll figure it out anyway. We’ll do good. We’ll hew to something true, even if the effort breaks us._

Someone still a little broken, still working on the fix, like she is. Someone to share that with.

Bruce is quiet on the other end, like he’s imagining talking to her adolescent self, and she wants to show him somehow, that even then, she had some kindness.

“Well here’s your chance,” she said. “What would teenage you have said to me?”

Sure it’s pretend, and they don’t do a lot of pretending. Neither of them had been innocent kids, flirting and fumbling, playing at adulthood. But she’s curious and needs a diversion from near death and sticky fingers, from feeling more and more unnecessary in her brother’s household, but afraid to walk away in case something happens. 

She wonders if he’ll go along, if the tension still between them from the diner has eradicated any sense of play. She’s hot and bothered, nervous suddenly, and says, “Oh, hey Bruce,” like she’s picking up the phone. “What’s up?”

“Homework,” he says, and she squirms a little, relieved. “You missed Calc.”

“Orthodontist.”

“Right.” They both know there hadn’t been braces for her; no money, no real adult to schedule anything like that, the blatant lie is part of the play because of course she was skipping. “Like yesterday.”

“Yesterday was a stomach bug.” This was the classic she used when she didn’t know when she’d be back because things were too difficult, or she needed to crash somewhere and just sleep, up all night working on projects that were distinctly not high school calculus.

“Yeah, well...I didn’t want you to miss the quiz tomorrow. You always do well, but it’s been a tough chapter, and Baker can be a dick about unexcused absences.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve always got a doctor’s note.” They hadn’t been fake, either. She’d known people running mail order prescription mills who thought it was a lark to send her pdfs. The trick was culling out the really outrageous ones. “But thanks. For calling. That was...nice of you.”

“Sure,” he stutters a little with it, all his resources bound up in doing this thing, being kind to a girl he admires, maybe feels bad for. “I’m glad you were home. I mean, I’m glad I caught you. I’m glad you’re okay.”

There is a sincerity that makes her swallow hard, layered over the kid she’d been, the kid he’d been. The people they are now, and whatever the hell they’re trying to become for each other.

“Bruce,” she says, giving him the chance she’d have never been generous enough to when she was young. “Was there something else you wanted? Something you wanted to ask me?”

She can imagine him young and fumbling, liquid dark eyes, fierce intelligence and anger, trying to analyze why a pretty girl was being nice to him and tipping his hand immediately. She hears him hesitate, and there’s a low chuckle. He’s learned how to harness his own charm as an adult, play his own kind of game.

“I’m not scary,” she says softly. “Maybe we could get together, study. Work on Calc..”

“Oh,” he says, “I think you’ve got it okay, but if you’re still looking for a lab partner for Organic Chem...”

“You’re right,” she says. “Titration’s a bitch. I need a partner with steady hands, a delicate touch. Who can push hard when necessary. Take control of the situation when it gets to be too much, but follow my lead otherwise.”

“I can do that,” he says, soft and throaty. “Push when you need it, take control.”

“Yeah?” she says, cheeks flushed, “I thought maybe you could. So you do wanna study later?”

His laughter in her ear makes her pull her knees up tighter, wrap her arm around her shin. “Whenever you want.”

“Hey Bruce,” she says, drops the game. “You wanna know what I’m wearing?”

“Nah,” his voice is low, and it sends a thrill through her, “It might ruin the fantasy.”

~*~

Bruce had gone to the rec center to use the track, spurred by Tony’s incredulity that anyone would run through snow and slush. Bruce hadn’t explained that snow was fine, slush was unpleasant but doable, ice was too dangerous; but all of that was moot since he hadn’t been running in weeks because he’d been spending that hour just getting out of bed each morning.

He’d simply packed his gym bag and pretended that he always switched over to the rec center when conditions deteriorated.

Sam had met him just inside, coaxing him to kill some time warming up on the court until the rest of his team arrived.

“Think Nat’ll be back soon?”

“I...I don’t know.” It’s been nearly three weeks, and the texts have been photos of her making chilli and drawing with the kids, a few notes about the class, and finally a note that Clint was home, but Laura still needed her help. Then that strange and sweet phone call a few days ago that left him buzzed and horny and weirdly aching to just hold onto her.

“I’m asking since the robotics class had a few weeks off for the holiday break, but they have two more sessions to go…” Sam dribbles and shoots. The ball whacks the backboard, bounces off.

Bruce retrieves the ball. He doesn’t play much, but it’s hard to resist throwing something that’s so clearly meant to be thrown. His own shot goes wide. “There’s no one at the school who could tag in?”

“The Chemistry teacher feels unqualified to teach the kind of circuitry Nat outlined. And we don’t have a Physics teacher right now. Gina’s been handling the high school course with a self-guided group and your modules, but she refuses to take on the Community Ed Robotics stuff on top of it.”

Sam steals the ball, dribbles again. He’s not that good, he’s just better than Bruce. The fire department league is legendarily mediocre.

“You guys still competing with the EMTs?” 

“Not anymore. It was too painful. Now we just play HORSE because Kate’s too short to win right away, Thor blew up the ball more than once, Phil’s still terrible, and Izzy got a sprained ankle.”

Sam feints, and Bruce goes for the ball, tries to remember how to do this. 

“We play on Thursday nights,” he says. “You should come. It’s fun.”

“This is fun?” But he can see that it could be, actually. Getting out more is probably a good idea. It’s not like they have a bowling alley. 

“Yeah.” Sam shoots again, this time making the basket.

“Look, I’m not really qualified either. I don’t do AI or programming. But I can probably follow her notes, and I have a friend staying with me who can step in. If that’s okay.”

Sam hesitates, “It’s Community Ed, so it’s not the same background check as for a teacher, but it’s still working with kids, so I’m still going to need your candidate’s resume, fingerprint, TB screen.”

Principal Danvers had made Bruce go through vetting when they hired him for the curriculum work last year. “Nat got fingerprinted?”

“Flying colors.” Sam chuckles, “She told me why the check could be a dealbreaker, but I showed her the list of disqualifying charges and she just laughed.”

“Well, I’m not saying my guy won’t do it, but is the background check going to be necessary if he’s my assistant?”

“Keep an eye on him, you know the drill. It’s the last two sessions. I’ll send a note out to the parents” Sam shrugs, “Beats giving these kids a refund, you know?”

~*~

Tony sports a skinned-knee sized Captain America bandage over the invisible patch where he’d been TB tested a couple days ago, and read that afternoon. He’s sitting in a student desk drawing a smiley face on each shield, and a version of his goatee on each square chin. He’s already unpacked each of the kids’ kits and laid them out around the large work table.

Bruce is still trying to make sense of the sheer wealth of data Nat’s been compiling on each of the girls’ projects and learning styles, trying to identify the tasks to complete so they have a workable prototype by the end of the session.

“As you know, Ms. Romanoff’s had a family emergency; I’m Bruce,” He gestures at Tony, who’s capping his sharpie. “Tony here has offered to help me walk you through the next two modules she outlined.”

“Hey kids,” Tony sets his phone in the middle of the work table and activates the holographic interface, “meet JARVIS.”

_“It’s a pleasure to meet all of you.”_

A dark eyed girl, maybe fourteen, raises her hand. 

“Don’t worry about raising hands,” Bruce says, “just ask and take turns.”

“Is that real AI?”

Tony spreads out his arms, embracing the question. “JARVIS is _the_ AI. He is the only game in town. He is a miracle of modern technology.”

_“Thank you, sir.”_

Bruce chimes in from where he’s troubleshooting a circuit with another student. “He also, apparently, accepts bribes and presents.”

_“Dr. Banner, I have been programmed to understand many different cultural mores of business protocol and etiquette. Gift giving and reciprocity are well-established modes of human interaction.”_

Bruce asides to Tony, “Did he just play the cultural relativity card?”

Tony mutters back, “I was thinking it was the C-3PO defense.”

A tall girl with jet black hair crosses her arms, “What, exactly, are you going to teach us? Don’t you run a company?”

“Ah, you must read Wired, but not The Wall Street Journal. Can’t say I blame you. I’m taking time out of my sabbatical to show you how to harness the power of your minds.”

A pipsqueak with braces that make her look like she’s eaten a satellite asks, “Like the Matrix?”

“Ooh, old school. I like you kid. Think more William Gibson, the classics coming round again. Virtual reality. New universes. Molly Millions heading off to Chiba City.”

Bruce raises an eyebrow. “Or, maybe, some basic motion controls and modular building. The foundations of robotics.”

“Or that,” Tony agrees. “But mostly universes.”

~*~

They eat at Paco’s afterwards, even though Bruce warned him about the quality, but Tony insisted that beer and salt was enough of a win.

“I’ve been forbidden anything that doesn’t consist of omega-3s, good fat, and superfoods. Which is an argument I’m still having with Pep, because my plumbing is actually fantastic, it’s just the wiring that’s bad. I appreciate my girlish figure as much as anyone, but before I go under the knife, or rather the laser, I want an assload of salt, lard, and shitty beer.”

“Well, this is the place.”

He tells Tony, second-hand, about David and his bold trek to freedom to win Daisy’s heart, which Tony, of course, finds hilarious.

“I find that kid following a quixotic romantic gesture way less surprising than Romanoff chaperoning the damned thing. He’s yours through and through, for all he looks just like Bets.”

“I don’t think I was ever that...yearning.”

Stark’s eye roll is epic. “Jesus, Banner, you’re exactly that yearning right now, moping over an empty house, horny over a phone call that didn’t even descend to breathy whispers. I don’t need your confirmation that you’re boning, you’re all moon eyes and depression. I’m just curious what you’re planning.”

He glares at Tony. “That’s all speculation, and I’m not mooning or moping or doing any of that. It’s winter. This is normal.”

“No, you not giving a shit and getting angry that life doesn't stop while you hibernate--that’s winter. This tastes different. I think you’re turning yourself inside out, letting things slip because you’re afraid to take the risk, maybe find some goddamned happiness again, you’d rather just get the failure over with. This isn’t you re-trenching, this is you resisting.”

“I’m not resisting. I’m...I don’t want to talk about this. How’s Pepper? How’s Rhodey? And how the hell did you get JARVIS to interface that smoothly via mobile, and how close are you to taking that to market?”

“I’ve been working on it because the firmware in this defib thing makes me cry angry tears, the security is nonexistent, so I’ve been having JARVIS monitor my monitor; right buddy?” 

The phone in his breast pocket smoothly replies, _“Qui custodiet ipsos custodes, Sir.”_

“Exactly.” Tony pauses as the plates come to the table, blankets of cheese bubbling from the broiler, and more than the expected number of Spanish olives rolling around on top. “This is less of a garnish and more of a game of marbles. I love it. So. Romanoff. Does she even know?”

“We tabled that, remember?”

“And now we’re at a table.”


	10. Bring it Home

Nat’s sprawled on Laura and Clint’s bed matching tiny socks from the pile of laundry as Laura cuts up sweat pants for Clint.

“Nat,” Laura says. “It’s time to go home. Clint’s okay, we’ve got a routine going, the kids are back in school. Go home.”

She shakes her head. “No, it’s okay. I can stay, I…”

“Sweetie, you’re welcome to stay, you know that, but I know you’re bored, and while you and Clint bickering at PT is the highlight of everyone’s day, you can bitch about his terrible form over skype. You’ve got shit to do, if those wires and circuits all over my guest bedroom are any indication. So go home. Do them.”

Nat balls up the socks, tosses them into the laundry basket.

Laura gives Nat a considering look. “Do you not want to go? Did you change your mind about that place?”

“No.”

“You’re making a life for yourself,” Laura says, sitting down on the bed, tossing the sweatpants aside, puts a hand on Natasha’s hair, a maternal gesture that isn’t lost on Nat. She feels young and small and scared, feels the old instinct to recoil against that vulnerability...and makes herself hang with it, try to express it instead.

“It’s mine,” she says. “There are...things that are mine. I don’t know exactly what to do with that. But I know I want them.”

“Things?” Laura’s eyes spark with teasing. “Or people?”

~*~

Bruce butchers while Angie grinds for sausage. It’s the second day of the reprise of bow season, and Kate’s come through with the venison she promised Nat.

Tony sits at the counter with his chin in his hands, eyes twinkling up at Angie. “You look like a woman who knows all the good gossip.”

“You wouldn’t be wrong,” she agrees, and continues to run the cuts through the grinder. On a sheet pan, rows of tied sausages lay full to bursting.

“Ang, you are in no way required to answer anything he asks you.”

She gives Tony an assessing glance. “How are you with flowers?”

“I have often bought them in extraordinary numbers as a way of apologizing for things I don’t remember doing.”

“Well then you should be capable of putting those in a vase.” She gestures to a bunch of branches in a cardboard box.

“I am a highly educated, highly regarded engineer. I think I can manage it.” Tony lays the branches out, sizing them up, starts to fill the vase in a way that looks nearly professional, artful but not studied.

“Nice,” Angie says.

Bruce gives him a look.

Tony shrugs, “Pepper took one of those flower arranging classes to give executives a hobby to combat stress. It didn’t really help. It was not very relaxing, and it only made us pickier about other people’s efforts.”

“Flower snob,” Angie teases.

“Exactly.” Tony adjusts the height of a couple stems, reassesses the composition. “Seems like lot of work for a next door neighbor. Nice, sure, but it’s not like someone died.”

“Tony,” Bruce warns.

Angie grins. “Maybe. The flowers are a thank you from Thor and Jane. Nat helped them with a sequencing project for a light installation, some tricky programming. The rest is a welcome home.”

“Well, home is where the heart is,” Tony says, smirking so hard his cheeks crack.

After they divvy up the cuts and sausages, Angie takes her portion home and Tony helps Bruce take Natasha’s over to her place. More to the point, he provides his version of moral support, fussing with the flower arrangement while Bruce stows packages in Nat’s freezer and kicks up her heat.

It’s on their way out that Tony makes a startled squawk.

Bruce whips around, already reaching for his phone to dial for help, but Tony is still on his feet, slowly walking toward Nat’s row of coat hooks by the door, hands reaching out as if to grasp the holy grail.

Nat’s green CERT helmet, hanging with her reflective yellow vest and go bag.

“This is perfect.” Tony cradles it between his fingertips, a look of pure awe that Bruce is frankly concerned about at this point. “This is too good.”

“Yeah, uhm, she’s been taking the Citizen Emer--”

“Civil Defense Force.”

“Kinda, yeah.” Bruce scratches the back of his neck, trying to explain the local culture of it, the way Drijfhout aggressively takes care of its own. “The local CERT leader is tenacious about recruiting talent, people good in an emergency--”

“I’ll bet.” Tony shakes his head slightly, and grabs a handful of Bruce’s shirt. “But no, this is _perfect_ , don’t you see?”

“Tony, maybe you should sit down--”

Instead he puts the helmet on his head and grabs a second fistful of Bruce’s shirt, ignoring his wince as he catches a couple chest hairs. “Bruce. Buddy. Babydoll. You can kick and scream all you want, even as you feather her nest and pretend you’re just being neighborly. You’re doomed, my friend.”

“Well this is becoming unnecessarily prophetic.”

“Who’s the first line of protection against Godzilla, Banner? The goddamned Civil Defense Force, that’s who.”

~*~

There’s a jar in the middle of the kitchen table, reaching branches and tiny pumpkins on sticks, eucalyptus and something fuzzy and white she can’t identify.

Despite her conversation with Laura, her certainty that she belonged back at her own house, she’d expected to feel hollowed out and displaced when she walked in. Instead she feels the quiet welcome of home, punctuated by the changes that have accumulated since she left. Each one a deliberate message for her; even her house key slid home like a hot knife through butter.

She’s held it together for nearly a month, twice as long as she expected to be gone, and she makes herself drag the suitcases to the bedroom. Her bed is made, another small vase of flowers on the bedside table.

She goes back into the kitchen, sees the note from Angie, opens the refrigerator. There’s yogurt, and two containers of soup labeled with some sort of date and code in what she recognizes as Bruce’s hand. There are packets in her freezer with drawings that look like a deer with limbs circled.

The basket next to her fireplace is filled with wood, and her windows look different. She’s willing to be they’re double glazed.

On her coffee table is a tiny version of the Hydra and a matching lion. They’re both modular. When she picks the lion up her fingertips complete a circuit; he cracks his jaw and gives off a tiny roar.

She takes the Hydra, fingers tangling in the sinuous curves of its necks like some elaborate set of brass knuckles, and drops down on the couch like she’s reached goal. She doesn’t realize she’s crying until she starts dripping onto the velvet. Relief, maybe. The body finally shedding stress. 

She rinses her face with cold water, and texts Angie a thank you, going out onto her deck to look at the lake, instead seeing Tony Stark carrying wood into Bruce’s house.

He stops in his tracks as she calls his name.

“Well, well,” he says. “The prodigal has returned.”

“Don’t be a dick, Stark.”

“I’m supposed to tell you that dinner’s at seven.”

“I’ll bring some wine.”

~*~

“There’s a new place, mostly fattoush and lula kabob and stuff, but it seemed like a good idea.”

The lamb is spicy, intense with a middle eastern bent, particularly slathered in the yogurt sauce. Nat eats it with her fingers, enjoying the way the pepper in the cabernet holds onto the heat.

Stark refreshes his glass of Retsina, “This makes me nostalgic.”

“Because you've eaten a forest?” 

“Or gargled with pine sol?”

Tony eyes them both like they're ganging up on him. “I refuse to answer on the grounds that I’m probably already incriminated and I don’t remember.”

Nat shrugs like this is totally plausible, and Stark feels obligated to clarify, “We went there last spring, sailboat around the islands near Turkey. I didn’t think I’d like it, but turns out, vacation is actually okay.”

“I’ve heard that,” Nat says, and raises her glass at him, even though her gaze keeps going back to Bruce.

He’s looking back, tilts his glass at her, and she bites her lip.

Stark feels like a wall between them, a barrier made of small talk, even if it is a little welcome. Bruce catches her up on casual local gossip, Tony’s brief tenure as the the robotics instructor, the comedy of errors that had been the storm window install since Len had hired Peter as casual labor, and Tony’s furious but short-lived effort to update the tech in the house.

“A flat screen is really all I suggested.”

“And T-1 lines to replace the wireless, which seems unnecessary. I don’t need a server farm, even if I wanted one.”

“Romanoff, help me out here.”

“How about if I ever decide to take over the world and want a server farm, you can come update my house?”

“Don’t do me any favors. I’m not sure I want you on my side, you keep breaking my heart every time you reject a consultancy gig.”

“SI took all of my top programmers and project managers, but only two of them have decent budgets or staff. Not my fault your management’s wasting talent you’re already paying for.”

Tony sits up at this. “Give me names.”

“It’s systemic, Stark, it’s the industry. Do a blind review of the code everyone’s writing, you’ll see it yourself.”

His eyes narrow, considering. “Tell you what, if I find anything worthwhile from that I’ll cut you a check same day.”

“Sure.” Nat waves this off. “I’ll build a robotics lab at the high school with it.”

“Love the new roommate,” she tells Bruce as she stacks plates in his sink He stands close, shaved clean, smelling like pumice soap and wood smoke, and she wants to lean into him, has missed him in this way she doesn’t even know how to talk about. He can need space, and zone out, and hate himself and doubt himself all he wants; but he’d kept her house open for her, all this warmth waiting for her, and that screams louder than any of his self-loathing or his fear. It’s as big a sign as the way he looks at her, like he’s found something he’d lost.

“He’s leaving soon,” Bruce says, “But it’s been good, having him here. Tony’s always good for clarity. And he’s going through some stuff right now. I can’t ever offer him much, but I can offer him this.”

That same warmth, that need and desire to be a force of good in the world, the kindness that he has on offer. It makes her shiver, sometimes, the way goodness can feel so big. It was one of the first things she’d loved about Steve, and she’s a little awed at the ways it can manifest in different people, that it can fill her with this kind of wanting. She looks up at him, and he licks his bottom lip, and takes the dishes out of her hand. The house is warmer than he’s been keeping it lately, and she’s full of wine and relief. Need that feels tangible.

“Get your coat,” he says, voice thick. “C’mon.”

He hollers, “We’re going for a walk Tony. We’ll be back in a few,” and hustles them out before she knows what’s happening.

The shock of the cold clears her head as they step out onto the road. “Winter arrived while I was gone.”

“Early freeze. It’ll get warm again probably, at least for a little while. We just have to make it through the first snap.”

They walk for a few minutes along the road, boots crunching in the snow. It’s so cold she can see her breath, feel the catch in her nose and lungs from the crisp air. It smells clean out here, is so quiet and dark, and she feels very small.

“Thank you,” she says finally, “For everything.”

Bruce stops, and turns to her. “That sounds dire.”

She shakes her head. “No, it’s just...I thought about staying. It’s a long recovery, six months probably, and I thought Laura could use the help but she sent me home. Said they needed to muddle through. I didn’t get that at first, but it makes sense now. We all have to keep our own houses.”

“So you came...home?”

She shrugs her shoulders up by her ears, but holds his gaze. “It was time.”

He puts cold hands on her cheeks, and she hooks her fingers into his belt loops.

“The house,” she says. “Here. It...I walked in, and I knew she was right.”

“It’s been waiting for you to come back. We wanted to help…” Something helpless skirts across his face.

“We,” she says, “or you?” She’s pushing him a little, even in all of the silence, toward some of the things they need to say out loud and sort out between them.

“Yeah, we.” He licks his lips. “But...also me.” He tugs her closer. “I missed you.”

Natasha nods and doesn’t make him say anything else as she fists her hands into his collar. He’s hesitant, but lets her pull his mouth to hers. The kiss is cold and sweet from the wine, the scent of his skin headier than the alcohol, but he’s wrapped tight and reluctant, like he’s managing expectations. She keeps one hand on his collar and slides the other down to slip up under his sweater.

He flinches back at the touch of her cold fingers, then surges forward like it’s cracked his composure.

He palms her neck and opens his mouth to hers, nipping at her bottom lip, licking the spot to soothe when she whimpers. She presses against him, tongue edging behind his teeth to the rough patch that makes him groan, makes his kiss desperate, and then they can’t get close enough with the bulk of their coats and sweaters between them. Her fingers curl against his waist, nails scraping under his waistband for leverage, for more skin to touch, and he moans into her mouth, breaking away, panting. Steaming in the cold. Struggling for distance.

“Nat,” he says, and strokes his thumbs over her cheekbones.

She closes her eyes, pushes her forehead against his. “Come home with me?”

He shakes his head. “No. I...You need to reset, regroup.”

“That sounds like an excuse.”

Bruce says her name again, shaking his head, but not denying it. She wants to push again, but weariness matches her warmth and she leans into him. He brushes his mouth against her forehead. “Come have some coffee first.”

~*~

Tony’s sitting in Nat’s accustomed spot on the couch, but instead of the chair she’s elected to take a spot of the floor, legs stretched out and fingers combing through the worn pile of the carpet. They’re discussing the pyramid scheme that Stark’s AI seems to be running with the lingerie she’s been sending him. Bruce keeps getting distracted by her hands petting his carpet the way they’d often pet his head or chest.

“So you’re telling me that Jarvis is gaming the system? Laundering his panty acquisition?”

Even having known Tony for decades, Bruce is always surprised that conversations like this are the norm around his friend. Nat’s gaze flicks up to him, like they’ve got a secret between them, anticipation and warmth, and he knows he’s going to disappoint her, and yet he’s so fucking relieved that she’s here.

It’s still a surprise.

“The problem,” Tony says, like it’s a logical leap, ”is that I’m not sure what he’s doing with them after re-routing them.”

“Your robot butler is an underpants gnome.” She laughs, bright and delighted, ringing something in him like a bell, and his chest aches. The scent of her hair lingers in his nose, the cool taste of her in his mouth, the feel of her in his arms, and all his good intentions seem meaningless. He has to push them aside, not let hope, that heavy cruel jest, get the better of him.

Because she came back, damn it. She went away and she came back, and that’s something entirely different than staying. He’d spent the time she was gone hoping for her return, preparing to lose her, and now...she’s here. Sitting in his living room. Bickering with Tony Stark. Waiting for him to make a decision.

“He’s like any offspring. You give him the tools, hope he’ll build something good with them. Sometimes he builds the pyramids, sometimes it’s a pyramid scheme.”

Bruce is going to send her home alone. He has to, even while part of his brain is sketching out a future for them both--that’s a daydream, another shining taunting improbability he has no idea how to achieve.

At the end of the night she goes without hesitation, as if there was no question of them both sleeping alone. She raises her hand in a wave as she goes through the break in the hedge, and Bruce closes his side door and locks up for the night.

Tony lounges on the couch, balancing his wine glass on his sternum. “Your chicken came home to roost.”

“I think your aphorism is off.”

“Maybe. There’s gotta be a bird metaphor in there somewhere though, after all that nest feathering you’ve been doing, but maybe chickens aren’t accurate.”

“Whatever.” Bruce looks at the wine remaining in his glass, pours it out.

“Just out of curiosity, why are you here and not over there reaping the rewards of reunion?”

“We’re taking things slow. I’m taking things slow. She just got home, it’s been a tough month. I don’t want… I don’t want to push either one of us. I don’t...”

“Bruce, Bruce, Bruce, that is such utter bullshit. You keep seeing the whole world as binary. I can have it or I can’t. I am this thing or I’m not. I’m either chocolate or I’m peanut butter. But mostly, the world is all about the compromises you make to be happy.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?”

“You act like it applies to everyone but you.”

Bruce sighs. “She kind of said the same thing.”

“Smart girl. Pretty. Terrifying. Seems to like you. Has disaster training, for fuck’s sake. So what’s all the fuss? I thought maybe I’d see you two together and it’d twang all off-key and wrong. But it doesn’t, so I’m putting my vote in for getting your head out of your ass. You’re not a lost kid anymore. So why say no?”

Bruce shakes his head. “Because maybe it _is_ still binary. This summer, it was easy. We didn’t have to talk about anything, make any decisions, because it never occurred to me that she’d stay. And if she stays, I can’t...I think I want too much. What if I can’t handle all of it, so many changes?”

“Well, buddy, whatever you want or don’t want, you’re already over your head in it. Moon eyes and yearning and all of it. So maybe? Reconsider your definitions.” 

“I think I just need to take things slow.”

“Slow’s all very well and good, but sometimes slow is just an excuse for scared. You deserve better than that.”

“It’s not about what I deserve.”

“The hell it isn’t. You’re convinced that failing once means you never deserve to succeed. Do you think that if you make this work, it’s, what? Disloyal to your kids that you couldn’t make it work with Bets?”

“Tony--”

“Over a decade ago, I might add, with two small kids and two academic careers to get off the ground - like being in your twenties isn’t bad enough as it is - and wait, there was something else...Oh, yes, right, the undiagnosed mood disorder you now understand and have under control.”

“It’s not that simple.” Bruce keeps objective measures; he has tracking spreadsheets because he respects the power of data accumulated over time. He’s not doing terribly so far, he’s on course to be more productive, but he’s also pushing himself harder, so he’s more aware of the struggle. The fight to wake up, to think a process through, to feel more than irritation, sometimes just to move his heavy limbs.

“I’m a pathological bachelor who’s found himself in a monogamous bi-coastal relationship with my former PA who is now my CEO.” Tony leans forward, “This is the women who unmercifully prodded me out of the dust of rock bottom and then ruthlessly made me climb all the way up to her. She knew what she was getting into, and she signed on anyway. I’m done for, Bruce, she’s the One. Would you ever have thought?”

“No, frankly, it’s one of the mysteries of life. It makes sense when you see the two of you together, though.”

“See?”

“See what? You’re not exactly a role model, Tony.”

“This is my point!”

~*~

On his way out of town Tony Stark knocks on her patio door. She opens the drapes and stares at him through the glass. He wears huge sunglasses and a wince, like he’s too hung over for even the approaching dusk. He’s carrying a large cardboard box. “Romanoff, come on, open up.”

She slides the door open, but makes him stand on the throw rug so he doesn’t get snow on her carpet. “Thought you were heading home?”

“I need a favor.” He sets down the box and opens the flaps, pulling out components, “I was going to install this on the sly, before I left, but Kermit’s a little touchy right now, and it’s a cutting edge system, I don’t want it smashed to bits because of a misunderstanding--”

“Stark, you’re making no sense.”

“Dawn simulator. Programmable for the whole house. I’ve been beating this drum for years, but he’s been adamant, but having now visited this place near the winter solstice I’m not taking no for an answer anymore. You’re too damned west to be Eastern Time Zone. I came from New York, I shouldn’t have fucking jet lag. I will prevail. Just not exactly right now--”

“Did you guys have a fight?”

“Minor quibble, just a little tea in the harbor; what I need is for you to do a quick install when he’s cooled off. Maybe around Christmas; he’s on his best behaviour when the kids are over. JARVIS has sent all the instructions.”

Nat’s phone pings on her coffee table. “I make no promises.”

Tony grins.


	11. Disconnect

The text had just said, _Can I borrow a cup of sugar?_

Bruce hasn’t baked in months, only has what’s left in the little bowl next to the coffee maker, but it’s about a cup and he dumps it into a sandwich bag. He pulls on his coat and gloves, for the long walk around the bank of snow that’s accumulated between their houses, but when he comes out of his side door he sees a shortcut dug out through the line of scrubby trees, the path they’d worn over the summer. He ducks through and lets himself into Nat’s house, shucking his boots on the landing so he doesn’t track in the snow, and slipping his coat off since she keeps it so warm.

There’s music, pulsing beat and haunting chord changes in the deep background. The floating lamp is aimed to bounce warm ambient light off the walls, illuminating her lounging on her couch in a burgundy satin peignoir.

A creamy stretch of leg curves bare, limned in the split skirt of the nightgown, a velvet slipper dangling from her toes. She slides the book she wasn’t reading onto her coffee table.

He tosses the bag of sugar next to it.

“I always wanted a neighbor just like you,” she grins, rising and catching his fingers in hers, pulling him down the hallway and into her bedroom.

His sense of unease crests when he sees the bedroom decked out in wine and candlelight.

She turns and there’s such an open hopeful look on her face, her bright hair and this luscious setting, he feels like he’s wandered into someone else’s scene. He feels every one of the thirteen years between them. He rubs his forehead and mutters more to himself than her at first, “God, you’re so young…Nat, what are you doing?”

She smirks, kicking off her slippers with a flash of leg. “I’m seducing you, Mrs. Robinson.”

The candles are set in Gilded Lily holders with evocative unfurled lips, delicate glass cups of hot wax mined all over the room. He thinks about how many tools they knocked off his bench fucking in his garage despite his best intentions to focus. Natasha is seduction on two bare feet; the costume and candles only push it into farce.

Bruce takes a step back, into the doorway.

Her brow furrows. “I broke the fourth wall, didn’t I?”

He’s not sure how to answer that.

Her stance changes and she folds her arms under her breasts. The flesh wells up soft, shifting as she shifts her elbows and surveys her bedroom with a jaundiced eye. “No, you’re right, it looks like a jewelry commercial in here.”

Bruce tries to lighten it, feeling worn and out of place in his jeans and his indeterminate grey t-shirt. “Just not up for playing pretend, I guess.”

Nat’s jaw clenches, and he hears too late how that might sound.

“That’s came out wrong--”

“How about Truth or Dare instead?” She takes a step toward him.

He inhales, then exhales slow, thinking that maybe he owes her the gesture. “Fine...okay.”

“You go first.” Her color is higher than it was a moment ago, when she was trying to kickstart the sex. “Let’s skip to the chase--I pick Truth.”

There’s an accent chair in the corner of the room, which he’s only seen her use for her robe and his clothes when she strips him. He sits in it and rubs his palms down his jeans. It’s not like he doesn’t have questions, he just hasn’t been asking them. She hops back into her bed, breasts jostling above her still folded arms.

“Here’s a question. You’ve got your whole life in front of you. Means and time to do whatever you want. How the hell am I on this list at all?”

Her bafflement is so acute it looks like annoyance. Or maybe it is annoyance. “I _like you_ , asshole. That’s why.”

“You’re going to want more than that, you could change the world, maybe have a family--”

“Got one.”

“--one of your own--”

“You think I want to risk doing to a kid what was done to me? No thanks. I’ve got three kids, and two parents to take care of them for me.” She shakes her head. “As for changing the world; I feel like I’ve made more of a mark on the world talking to Daisy in the shop, working with Angie’s theater rats, hell, when Izzy pulled that boater and his dog out of the water last week there was a small piece of that rescue my programming helped make happen sooner.”

“You’re good with kids.” He’s picking at the rough edge of a callous on the heel of his hand. “You might not want them, but you wouldn’t have passed that abuse along.”

She lets out a ragged breath. “My mom was good with kids, too, but she died when I was three and my dad was...not nearly as stable. Shit happens. That’s just never been something I wanted. I’d get the snip like you, but I never had the cash.”

“I hear it’s a bit more involved for women. I just had a few days of ice packs and grumbling.”

“Yeah, that sounds more like getting a new IUD.”

“A new one? What, do they wear out?”

“Um, yes. I’ve got another three years on this one.”

“Huh.”

She scoots on the bed so her back is against the headboard. “Your turn.”

Her bed is more comfortable than the chair, but he thinks that’s even more reason to stick where he is. He doesn’t see how Dare would be the good choice, either, so he says, “Truth.”

Her voice is delicate, just audible over the quiet music still pulsing in the background like a heart. “Bruce?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

“The worst thing.” He thinks about it as he methodically removes a thick layer from the palm callous. They always loosen and peel in the winter, from the lack of friction and humidity. There are so many things he regrets, so many images of himself and his actions that even now fill him with shame, but a lot of them have healed after a fashion, been layered over with scar tissue and time. This one..this is the one that showed him what he truly was, showed him what he was capable of, the one that has shaped all of his choices since, to mitigate the risk, to never be that far gone again. He speaks while still looking down at his hands, thumb digging into the tender skin he’s exposed. “Nearly killed someone.”

It’s her silence that drags his eyes up to her. She’s got the wine bottle propped in her lap, cradled in her hands. “That all?”

“Yeah, that’s all.”

“Well...depending on how we’re scoring, me too.”

She takes a swig of wine right from the bottle.

She eventually meets his eyes. “I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours?”

Bruce feels a cold crawling itch to touch her. Instead he whispers, “Okay.”

She pours the wine and offers a glass, giving him an excuse to leave the chair, and when he does she shifts over on the bed. He stretches his legs out next to hers, denim and stocking feet alongside burgundy satin. Her toenails are polished to match, glossy chips of garnet.

“I uh. Bets and I were separated. I was crashing with my Aunt Susan.”

Nat shuffles the pillows, and then she’s pressed against him from shoulder to hip.

“My cousin Jen, she’s younger, in college at that point, she’d been dating this guy, real piece of work. Jen’s really sharp, but sensitive. There’s some of Jen in David, that weird streak of quiet independence, but high strung. No one knew this guy’d been working her over, not until she had to move to get away from him casing her house. She’d been ashamed it got that far, you know?” 

He takes a moment to focus on the wine, which is smooth and clean. She waits for him to continue.

“We had the U-Haul nearly packed, and I was finishing putting the doughnut on her car--he’d shown up that morning and started slashing tires, but a neighbor shouted at him and he only got the one. Anyway, he comes back, didn’t see me at all, I was half under the car because the jack had gotten caught on the frame, I only knew something was up when Jen made this noise…He’d brought a gun, he was real quiet, just flicking it at her to get her back in the house, and I... I don’t remember exactly. Jen says I came up over the hood of the car and plowed into him. The gun went flying, probably when I broke his arm--”

She hums and he remembers Laura telling him that Nat herself has heard that popping crack. The thought makes him antsy.

"I didn't stop, though; collar bone, ribs, knocked some teeth out. Jen had already taken the gun and locked it in her car, she even grabbed it with her sleeve, since neither of us had touched it--she’s brilliant, I told you, after this she became a lawyer--”

She takes his wine glass, reigning him back in.

“Jen’s the reason I’m not in prison, because she got the goddamned tire iron out of my hands before I brained him on the front lawn of her apartment building. This is about when the haze lifts, because what I remember is being absolutely furious at Jen for prying my hands off his throat. I would have killed him. No question. That’s when I found out I was capable of it, that if I wasn’t careful...that I have to be careful.”

“Blind rage.”

“Yeah, blind murderous rage.”

He doesn’t know his hands are shaking until she catches one in hers.

“Okay.”

“That’s all you have to say?”

“I’m waiting my turn.”

“I mean, the rest is just, that’s when I stopped struggling to salvage the marriage, any kind of career. I figured the wellbeing of the kids was everything that mattered at that point.” He shakes his head, shrugs, settles into idly petting her hand in his. “So...yours?”

Nat’s laugh is a short sharp two-note thing, like a tennis ball bouncing off a brick wall back to you. Her recital is in clean dispassionate sentences, punctuated by pauses where she swallows, or presses her lips, or throws a wry expression up toward the ceiling. Dispatches from a hidden war front.

“Dad had been dead for about a year, so it was technically Clint and I left with Bev. At this point, even Clint was calling her Bev, which she hated, she blamed that on me, too. Bev let me stay. The alternative was to look bad and have nothing to complain about. I was fourteen, but I had friends, I had a few bolt holes. I came through the house every week or so. Dad never told Bev about mom’s survivor benefits, so I’d been diverting them since he died, they were technically mine anyway, but I didn’t want to change the address on it. Clint would stash my mail in his room, and I’d also do laundry.”

She offers him his glass when she refills her own.

“I’d hang out in the basement, quick egress if she came home. I didn’t realize she already was home, the house wasn’t just quiet, it felt empty. I shifted the load over to the dryer, and went upstairs to raid the kitchen. Bev was always good for a jar of peanut butter at least. I didn’t even see her the first time I passed through the living room.”

Her eyes focus again, and she meets his gaze briefly before looking down and then into her glass of wine.

“Clint knows up to this part, and once I called 911. He doesn’t know what I’m about to tell you. I think Laura...Laura decided long ago not to ask.”

Bruce slowly reaches his fingers toward hers, and is relieved when she lets him take her hand again.

“I stood there looking at her, for the longest time trying to figure out if she was breathing without touching her. The blinds were closed. I realized it was a Saturday. Clint would probably be home in a couple days, to see if Bev remembered his birthday. We’d been joking that she’d flip a coin and either get him a cake or throw his shit out on the lawn because he was an adult. She was in a bad way, I remember her fingernails were this dark blue, it crept up her hands as it went on. It took about three hours for her to stop breathing. I got the peanut butter, had a soda. Watched...”

He's seen her eat it by the spoonful right from the jar, the way she forages a bag of carrots or a chunk of cheese. It occurs to him that this is the first time he's seen her bed made. He knows what she's saying should sound monstrous, having an afternoon snack while you watch someone die, but it sounds...human, and terribly lonely. He grips her hand, wanting her to feel his touch as deliberate, steady.

“I don’t know, it’d be nice to say it was shock, but I think I just wanted to prove something. I kept thinking how things would be better with her gone, and while we didn’t get to keep the house, and Clint took it harder than I thought, I wasn’t that wrong in actual fact.”

Nat drains her glass and sets it on the side table. Bruce encloses her hand in both of his, wanting to convey a thousand things he can’t even begin to put into words.

“So you ask me if I want to change the world, and I think maybe I’m not the kind of person who should have editing privileges. Maybe I should figure out how I can be a good person...and maybe happy too, if I can swing it.”

He reaches over and wraps his hand around the back of her neck and just pulls her to him. She tucks her head in the crook of his shoulder, facing outward so she can get air, like she plans on staying there for a while, and her breathing is harsh, her grip on him almost bruising.

~*~

He finds a pair of loose sleep pants and a t-shirt for her while she blows out the candles, turns the music off, puts the wine glasses in the sink. It’s such a strange sort of normalcy for such an abnormal evening. She hasn’t asked him to stay, but he can’t honestly imagine leaving her alone, doesn’t want to go back to his house tonight anyway.

Maybe this is equally selfish, wanting the intimacy of confession to carry over, but he only has so many defenses, feels raw with it. He’s taken off his jeans and socks, put them in the chair, sits on the edge of the bed while she changes, and feels oddly vulnerable, more naked than any of the times they’ve stripped down to nothing but skin and desire in this room.

There’s something about the set of her jaw, her shoulders rolled in that suggests she feels the same, but he looks up, meets her gaze and she tilts up the corner of her mouth, nods for him to get into bed. Permission. Welcome.

It’s started to snow again, the creaking and cracking of the lake audible in the hush of the house. He slides over to the side, holding up the comforter as she crawls in with him.

There’s enough light from the bright snow and the moon bouncing in through the windows that he can see the shape of her skull, the sweep of her cheekbones, and there’s a catch in his throat, just being here, so close to her.

He lays on his side, hand tucked up under his head, facing her. She mimics his position and wriggles in closer so that he can hear her when she whispers, “Tell me something sweet.”

He puts his hand on her hip, and she cups his cheek.

“C’mere,” he says, and she wriggles in further, tucking herself into his body, arms and knees and the positions where they simply fit like puzzle pieces, lessons learned from inclement weather, a battered hammock and summer luxury. It’s just as satisfying in the winter darkness.

“Sweet, huh? I’m not sure I’ve got anything sweet enough to make up for…”

“Turning me down?”

“Nat…” It’s just that she’s not wrong, and there’s something a little perverse about still being in her bed right now, seeking comfort, looking to give it, knowing this is equally dangerous.

Her voice is low, self-mocking in a way he rarely hears from her. “I don’t want to sound vain, but… that part? Karma is a bitch…”

She can’t have been turned down often, if ever. “It isn’t you,” and god isn’t that the worst line, because it’s true and not. “Or maybe it is, but not like... I just...can’t. Right now I can’t. There’s so much I’m trying to make happen, and it’s…”

She’s silent, but her hand is still on his face, thumb stroking his cheekbone, brushing his mouth. “Okay,” she says, like she’s conceding that he believes his words, but remains unconvinced. “Okay, so what does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” he says, and takes her hand, pressing a kiss into her palm. 

~*~

Natasha’s curled into a recliner re-upholstered with a heavy gauge blood red corduroy, tucked under a granny square afghan of white with black accents, a play on ermine that must be Angie’s commentary on the royal chair.

Angie’s broken out the gin.

“Peg always buys the good stuff, but she never drinks it. Just bourbon. I took a bartending class a few summers ago, when we had this swoon-inducing craft bartender who spent a summer up here making artisanal bitters and designing bespoke labels, so we’ve got all sorts of fancy booze for drowning your sorrows.”

Nat laughs. “I’m not drowning anything.”

“Dousing the fires of rage then?”

“Isn't that pouring fuel on the fire?”

She mixes gin and something green with lime juice into antique lowball glasses, frosted and trimmed with gold oak leaves. “Last Words,” she says, offering one to Nat. “They’ll get you drunk and you’ll thank them for it, even the next day.”

“It smells like cherries.”

“That’s the Montmorency liqueur, homemade.” Angie settles into the well-used Adirondack chair beside her. “This was the prototype. It still sticks if you go back too far, then you have to get out and shove it from behind. But it’s still my favorite.”

The drink is sweet, tart and cool, a summer fantasy, even though summer’s long gone.

“How long have you and Peggy...?”

“Forever, really. She had a tragic affair, and she needed a new life, and I’d always loved her. So I came out here with her, as a friend first. And then...”

Nat’s surprised by how much the look on Angie’s face touches her. “And then,” she agrees.

“You wanna tell me what’s buggin’ you, honey? I’m always happy to hang out, chat or not, but I know you don’t care enough about the spring play to really help me rank scripts. And you’ve got distracted written all over you.”

Nat downs her drink a little too quickly. “Nothing. Sorry, it’s nothing.”

“Just for that I’ll make you read the biblical one featuring a talking fist with a beard called Abrahand. It’s like Punch & Judy but more violent.” Angie snorts. “This is my little illustration that I’ve probably heard worse today.”

Natasha is unexpectedly ashamed of the deflection, and not just because it failed. “I just...don’t like being used as an excuse,” she says. “I got my feelings hurt, and now I’m feeling sorry for myself. Really, it’s fine. I’m just grouchy tonight. Maybe I’m wallowing a little.”

Angie sips at her drink, then sets it on the side table between them. “I don’t want to pry, I know you’ve both been private about this stuff. But, if I could offer any kind of advice?”

She pauses until Nat looks at her, lifts her brow a little.

“If this is something you want? Maybe ignore what you’re hearing, focus on what you know.”

Nat turns her glass around in her hand, and Angie continues careful, but unyielding.

“But Nat, if it’s not...if you’re not sure, maybe this is for the best. You both walk away, dignity intact, and learn to live like actual neighbors.”

She sets her glass on the side table and changes the subject. “I’ve got ten kids signed up for the extra credit class next term. It’s the kind of thing I could build an actual program around, get funded for scope with some good pilot and test data. Phil’s been encouraging me to show this prototype table I'm building at the salon, in that way he has of nodding that makes you feel like you just built a universe. It’s for small scale work, with drawers and pockets to store components and circuits, ports for electricity, USBs, something that can be replicated. CERT is strangely fun. I like what I’m doing. It’s satisfying.”

“And that’s professional. What about the personal, current hiccups and hurt feelings aside?”

Nat bites her lip, her shoulder coming up. “More than satisfying. But. You know. Complicated. I didn’t plan on...complicated.”

Angie just shakes her head, gets up, refreshing the drinks. “Do you know why I like the teenagers?

Nat knows why she herself likes them. “They’re sticky and dramatic and hilarious, like everyone here, but with the excuse of not being adults.”

“That's Peg's view, too; she says they're just like regular people, only worse.”

Nat finds herself contrasting the date she'd chaperoned at Paco's with her own failed attempt at brunch at the diner. She's also starting to feel the booze, and that buzzy distance helps her find it kind of funny. In her case the regular people are worse.

“What I like is that every day is something new. Some new trauma, some new elation. I feel completely zen when I’m around them. But what I really like is the honesty of their intensity. Even when they try to hide it, to play cool, their passion is bigger than they can contain.”


	12. Retreat and Retrench

There are boxes and boxes of metal chickens, and Bruce looks so thoroughly pissed off, standing in the middle of them that Nat has to choke back a laugh.

“Fuck,” he says. “Fuck me. Fuck these chickens. Fuck _everyfuckingthing_.”

She comes into the kitchen. “So, you’re saying that if I asked you to fry me a chicken right now, I’d get a…”

“Yes, and fuck you too very much.”

He picks up the manifest, digs around in the pocket of his flannel shirt, and pulls out a pair of reading glasses.

“Nice specs,” she says and he just glares, not at all intimidating. The glasses are good on him, amping up the sexy professor vibe. Still, they’re a new addition, and she has to give him a little bit of hell. “Do you actually need those because…”

“Fine print,” he gripes. “Apparently, if I want to read fine print, yes. I need them.”

“Aw.”

Behind him, on the square foot of kitchen table not covered in stacked boxes, his laptop is open and there’s a sheaf of paper applications next to it. Paper, she thinks with a shake of her head, vowing to take a picture send to Stark, double down on the harassment.

“Here.” She holds out her hand for the paperwork. He turns down his mouth, but finally gives it over.

Bruce leans against the kitchen counter, glasses askew as he pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Yeah,” she says, reading through the manifest. “They fucked up.”

“I know they fucked up. The chickens were supposed to go to this big, fancy food place in Chicago, not to me. I’m trying to figure out who to call so they’ll come get them and take them to the right place. I have been trying to figure that out for two fucking hours, and I’m just going in circles. I’ve called all of the logical parties, and none of them will take care of it.”

There’s a thread to his tone that sounds a lot like something’s breaking, like this is a step too far and he’s ready to crack.

“If they don’t go to the retailer I don’t get paid, which means I can’t pay back the manufacturer, and then they keep the mold, and can sell the patent, and I’m fucked. I just… this was supposed to be the easy part of this whole stupid endeavor, commercialize the chickens, and I hate making those goddamned chickens but now I won’t even have that to fall back on--.”

“Bruce,” she says, sharp and tight, like she does with the kids when they’re worked up. “It’s nice out, more or less. Go run. Or take the bike. Go beat on something in the workshop. I’ll figure this out.”

He shakes his head. “No, it’s my mess. I’ll figure it out. I’m just...little shit just seems bigger. I know I’m overreacting.”

He is and he isn’t. She knows the balance of funds is precarious, that even with the commissions, he needs as much capital as he can get to actually make it through winter until the grants come in. There’s not much excess.

He reaches for the manifest again, and she shakes her head. “No, let me.” She catches his eye. She can do this, and she very much wants him to let her. “Please.”

He holds her gaze, and there’s a darkness there, a self-loathing that makes her wince. He’s got circles under his eyes too, like sleep hasn’t been easy, and she puts the paperwork on the box nearest to her, palm flat atop it, and reiterates, “Please.”

“I’ll go outside,” he says, a concession. “I’ll run. But I can handle this.”

Nat unravels the mess while he’s gone, years of phone charm and negotiating with vendors and hashing out designs with manufacturers in many countries helping her suss out who to talk to and which carrots and sticks to use. She gets him free shipping to the retailer, sending the new labels to print at her house and taping them onto each box as she calls for a pick-up.

Bruce comes back sweaty and rosy-cheeked, in an MIT sweatshirt nearly as old as she is. She’s hungry, but he doesn’t have anything but crackers.

The manufacturer has already emailed him the revised shipping report and the time the driver will pick up the chickens, and cc’d him on the communications to the retailer apologizing for any delay.

Natasha works very hard not to feel smug, but she does take out a pair of chickens and makes them do a victory dance.

When he tips her chair back against his stomach and kisses her upside down, vigorous and with a surprising amount of tongue, she’s more startled than anything.

She fists her hands into his sweatshirt, and hangs on as he concludes with a soft sweep of his hot palm up her throat. He tilts her back into place, and rubs at the spot behind her ear that makes her go a little melty. “Thank you,” he says, low and a little choked. “Now go home.”

~*~

“I hear you’re in for it.” Maria’s desk is lit by Southern California sun, while Natasha’s only glimpse of anything approaching that cheer is Stark’s dawn simulator glowing from where she'd stowed it in a corner. She thinks she might install it in her own house, test it out.

“Did you call just to rub it in, Malibu Maria?” This is not the first call Nat's fielded today about the weather. The national media is in a tizzy over a winter storm that could dump over a foot of snow across a swath of the Midwest, meanwhile Nat’s neighbors have greeted the news with an eye roll (Nick), a snort of laughter (Phil), a bored jerking off gesture (Angie), and a clenched jawed sigh and a trudge toward the wood pile (Bruce).

“Maybe a little. Also, I wanted to thank you for the lingerie.”

“Wait, how are you the endgame for the underpants scheme?”

Maria's smile is smug and serene. “JARVIS has concerns for Mr. Stark’s safety, so I get gifts when I demonstrate what he deems sufficient care. I was impressed with the fact he’s trying for positive reinforcement, but now I suspect I’m scanned when I go into the labs and my preferences are being logged. Now I’m torn between being a little creeped out and even more impressed that he’s learning and applying the knowledge when he reupped the subscription.”

“He re--I’m going to have to check my financials for December.” Natasha is not opposed to buying nice things for Maria, but this prank is gaining sentience.

Maria flashes her a bra strap, deep blue satin with a tiny black bow. “Being semi-retired, how does a snow day work?”

“I’m spending it in the tub.”

“I’m impressed you’ve managed to up the ante.”

“I’m investigating this whole ‘self-care’ concept.”

It’s a surprisingly good day, with nothing to do but watch the snow pile up outside her cozy little house. She soaks for half a novel, then methodically works through her whole cabinet of ablutions, opening pores and exfoliating and trimming and painting and moisturizing. Skin steaming, she rolls around in bed leisurely masturbating for nearly an hour, making as much noise as she wants and relishing the complete wanton privacy of her own damned space.

Sated and now ravenous, she slips on some fuzzy socks and the yukata style bathrobe she’d stolen from a Tokyo hotel room a few years before, and makes a version of Angie’s breakfast hash.

She’s fallen asleep on the couch, nearly spent novel abandoned on the floor, when Bruce stops by, calling out as he comes through her kitchen. It’s dark, but not late.

He eyes her bathrobe, tie loose and her hair in utter disarray from her nap. Her jaw cracks on a yawn as she shakes her head, gestures him onto the couch and goes to get dressed.

It’s become a pattern of them meeting up in the evenings, companionable, and cooking dinner together half the time. She reads or works on projects or studies her CERT course, while Bruce grinds away on his laptop, hitting the backspace only slightly less than any other keys. He’s not looking to bounce anything off of her about it, and she doesn’t push, doesn’t suggest talking to Darcy about how she manages to install Jane around the country as an artist in residence or giving seminars. It’s better when he brings the graph paper to sketch and diagram instead, but then it's also worse.

Those are the nights when he forgets to be so distant, when he leans past her in the kitchen with a hand on her shoulder blade, when he holds out a spoon and brushes his thumb across her chin when she tastes; when he’s relaxed enough to fall asleep on her couch instead of angrily typing and tensely sighing. He drifts off pretty early those nights, exhausted she thinks, like the catnaps he’d take in the summer when his body force-rebooted him after working all day and night.

Bruce is a vulnerable collapsed sprawl just within reach, just out of reach, and Nat wants to wake him up and kick him out. She wants to tuck up next to him and smell him, burrow into him and shore him up by turns. Instead she mutes the background noise of the television and listens to him breathing, slow rise and fall, and it kind of hurts.

~*~

Bruce moves the bandage a little further up his face so the fake blood doesn’t cover his eye, and scratches his back against the corner he’s leaning against, ignoring Phil groaning in faux agony next to him.

The community theater folks, portraying a church group in the front of the bus when it crashed, have already been sorted by the response team into the “immediate” and “dead” triage categories, and don’t require much more attention. It was a strategic move by Nick, because he valued authenticity in his corpses, and they were the only group he trusted to remain still and quiet on the tarp designated for the expired. It was a point of artistic pride with them.

Phil and Bruce were ostensibly in the car the bus hit, so they’re resting on the side of the road.

“Quit moaning,” he grouses at Phil.

“Authenticity,” Phil says, and moans again. Sam has his arms crossed, supervising, mouth twitching as he tries not to laugh. Eventually, Nat comes over to decide whether they should be upgraded or downgraded.

She checks Phil, brisk and efficient, and puts a red card on him. “Sorry Phil, you’re not going to make it.”

She moves over to Bruce, fingers gentle on his pulse. She puts her hand high up on his thigh. “Structural integrity,” she murmurs, flicks the penlight into his eyes.

He tries to play the victim, but can’t help but grin at her as she moves her hands over him, competent and teasing.

“Alright, doc. You’ve just earned a yellow card. You can go get a snack.”

He eats one of Angie’s brownies, sipping coffee while Nick assesses their triage skills, noting the man's smug look when he gets to Nat. She’s clearly the star pupil. Thor, on the other hand, was visibly distressed with breaking people down into categories, suffering over the naming of the dead. Jane, who only agreed to take the basic CERT and has now escaped the clutches of Admiral Fury (retired), strokes along Thor’s bicep, soothing.

They gather at Paco’s, as the local brewery’s too small in winter to accommodate all the volunteer victims and the CERT crowd, along with their normal clientele. It’s hot and crowded, too many people in a space that rarely holds more than a baker’s dozen at a time but Paco’s had yet to figure out how to screw up bottled beer.

“I know that it’s an exercise,” Thor tries to explain his dismay, “but there’s such a finality there, deciding that one life is greater than another.”

Bruce had managed to snag a bar stool, and due to the crowd Nat is practically sitting in his lap. He puts his hand on her waist, a subtle show of support.

“You have to put the effort into saving the people most likely to respond,” she says. Her voice is clear and solid and firm, it’s no rote memorization, no policy spouting. Bruce tightens his grip, feels her lean into him at the gesture.

Triage is hardly a new concept for either of them.

Nat reaches over, then, unexpectedly, touches Thor’s shoulder. “I think it’s important though,” she says, “to have someone out there like you, never willing to let go of that possibility.” He gives her a wide, dazzling smile and she quirks her mouth, pulls her hand away.

She leans back into Bruce and it just looks like they’re giving in to the crush of people, as he fights the urge to steal her away, to drop the hard line he’s holding against the sex. This casual crush, this sharing of space in public, it’s more telling in some ways than taking her home, giving in, giving up, getting what they both want.

She curls her hand around his wrist as she reaches for her beer, hip pressing into his inner thigh, a deliberate brush across his balls as she turns, and he clears his throat to cover the inadvertent growl. He signed up for this, and he keeps returning, finding solace and frustration, sometimes even joy.

~*~

Clint calls her as soon as he gets the text of her standing in front of the big white Bronco II with her thumbs up.

“You’re gonna kill someone in that thing. It’s not a snow car.”

“You say that like you know what a snow car is.”

“I know that buying a car you’re gonna need a step stool to get into, with a shitty center of gravity and poor stopping power, is a bad idea.”

The seller shivers in his long driveway, an enthusiastic look on his face as she talks to Clint.

“You are the ultimate spoilsport. I love this thing. It’s glorious. Plus, I have to buy something. I’ve been borrowing a motorcycle the past two weeks during the thaw, but it’s gonna snow again.”

“Who’s bike?” He sounds particularly cranky.

“I'm not having this conversation. You don’t get to comment on my life choices after you pretty much called Steve and begged him to take me back.”

“I called him because I’m civilized and wanted to thank him for the care package he sent the family.” He pauses. “And because I'm so bored I'm going out of my skull. Seriously, I've been _knitting_ , Nat. I made a scarf.”

“You also got the scoop on his visit this summer. Laura ratted you out, Clint. You’re on my list, even if you are a vet with a war wound.”

He’s quiet. “Look, I just worry about you. Steve is a good guy.”

“The best,” she agrees. “And, from what I understand from Sharon, very happily investigating life with a talented misanthropic project manager now under contract with a national security agency. Sharon hates people; Steve loves to debate their merits, show their worth. I think they’re gonna be good together.”

“And you?”

The seller's grin hasn't shifted an inch, yet now looks kind of desperate and scared.

“I'm gonna buy a beater to drive in the snow and teach myself to make pierogi and borscht, get back to my roots.”

Laura hollers in the background, and Clint sighs. “Well, buy something big enough to haul us all around. Something that won’t tip over. Christmas is just around the corner.”

“Clint,” she says softly. “What if I told you that I’m working on being happy. That it doesn't look like what I thought it would. That sounds so fucking sentimental, but...you know.”

“Ah, Nat,” he says. “I love you too. Don't buy the Bronco.”

~*~

Bruce had grunted when she asked to borrow the bike one more time. “You don’t have to ask,” he’d said. “Plus, why don’t you just take the truck?”

“Consider it a formality,” she says. “And you need to go into town. It’s Tuesday. You need the truck for groceries.”

He frowns. “Fuck. I didn’t put in an order.”

She pulls on her helmet, a study in nonchalance. “Just go get it. You’re all set.”

He catches her elbow as she turns. “Be careful,” he says softly. “Or call me if…”

“I’m fine,” she shakes his hand off, and flips the face plate down. She knows that she’s being difficult, but then so is he.

~*~

There’d been flour, yeast, butter and sugar in his grocery order. He really does have to wonder what she’s running there, and he’s tempted to either send it back, come clean with Bob that he’s got stuff that he didn’t order, or just pretend he didn’t get any of it.

Except this travel grant is worse than his grad school admission paperwork, as miserable as his last NSF application, while being stupidly vague about everything but where he wanted to go and why. If he gives up on this whole masochistic fucking exercise in self-realization, it’ll be over the paperwork. Why a goddamned travel grant wants the history of his artistic philosophy, he’s not quite sure, nor is he sure how the grant will help him ideate that philosophy. And everything he’s considered makes him feel like an asshole. Hell, reading the words makes him feel like an asshole.

Frustrated, he wings the pen at the kitchen cabinet. It hits the handle and explodes in a satisfying crackle of plastic. Better a pen than his tablet.

He looks back at the box of dry goods, sighs. It’s better than philosophy.

He wants something simple, starts the dough for the country white loaf even though he knows she prefers the seeded bread. He’s been trying to get outside during the day a little, running when the roads are clear enough, just getting out and going into town when they aren’t, even making it to the rec center a few more times since Tony’d left. But it’s cold today, the snow refracting the sunlight into a thin piercing glare. He feels headachey and tired and almost physically sick from trying to articulate what he hopes to get out of a ten day residency with an expert in kinetic motion, or a two week trip to Jakarta, from wading through applications that will fund enough of the work to let him get through the rest of the next year intact. Maybe he should call Freida, rescind his hard line, take any commission she’s got.

His wrists creak with the kneading, out of shape, but there is a kind of bilious virtue in making the bread, and he’s made enough for several loaves. He’s forming it into balls, looking out the window when he sees Nat park a maroon Jeep Cherokee a few years into its dotage in her driveway. Huh, he really would have bet money on the Bronco.

He rubs olive oil on the outside of the dough and covers the bowls with dish towels, sets them on the stove. Nat’s hauling bundles of wood out the back. He hasn’t talked to her in a few days, weary and trying to focus. He looks at the applications, his laptop open but in sleep mode, and he thinks fuck it, grabs his coat, shoves his feet into his boots without lacing them up, and heads through the hedge.

Nat greets him with a tilted head and a rueful smile, and hands him an armful of wood. 

“Free labor,” she cheers. “Welcome.”

He grunts, nods at the car. “So you finally made a decision.”

He looks in the back of the SUV, then shuffles over to the wood pile, dumps the bale down, ties his boots loosely and heads back for another armful.

“Practicality prevailed. Also, I hit an unexpected patch of ice in the Bronco when I went back to drive it again, fishtailed in a big circle, and decided that maybe Clint was right, god help us all.”

She gives him another bale, takes one herself. “With the Subaru...I just couldn’t. Plus, if I want to tow something or drive over rocks, this baby can still do that with relative safety.”

He gives it an assessing eye. “That sounds like a challenge.”

They finish unloading, and she reaches into the back seat, pulls a bag out. “You wanna come in?”

He doesn’t. He does. He’s somewhere in the middle. He’s cranky and frustrated, and he doesn’t want to take it out on her. 

“I’ve got a bunch of that tea you liked. Maria sent me a vat.”

“Sure,” he concedes.

“Don’t do me any favors Bruce.” She says it lightly, but there’s a sharpness to her grin, a warning, and he dips his head, takes it to heart.

“Yeah, I’m okay. I’d love some tea. I’m thinking of burning down my house, if it’ll keep me from filling out these damned applications.”

They shed coats and boots in the hallway off the side door, and she puts the bag on the couch.“From Jane, she’s experimenting, thought of me. ‘S nice.” 

She pulls out an inky black throw made of giant stitches, thick as his wrist, and another of a berry bright red, the pattern and texture so fine and thin it’s a gossamer spider web. She holds it up, her hand underneath it. 

The yarn catches the light and glints, the warm glow of her skin showing through like a peepshow. It’s a complicated stitch, and looks like a simple tug could undo the whole thing. It’s all art and no cover, decadent, and he thinks of Nat wrapped in that red blanket and nothing else, pale skin and bright hair, and he swallows hard. “Pretty,” he says. 

Since the aborted seduction, neither of them have explicitly brought up sex, but it’s there in every interaction, every casual brush of fingers and arms, in the distance between them sitting at the worktable, on the couch, over coffee and grant applications and quizzing her on level one search and rescue techniques, in the air between them when she calls him on the phone. 

So thick the other night when she’d fallen asleep against his arm watching a movie, he could have choked on it. She’d woken up when he’d slid his arm out to wrap around her, then burrowed into his neck, curling up tight. He couldn’t help himself, mouth against her forehead, fingers in her hair, and she’d slid her hand into his lap, only to have him still, and gently thread his fingers through hers, relocating her touch to his chest.

“Damn it, you want to be convinced,” she’d said, “But you’re afraid to let me convince you.” It was the truth, and not nearly the sum of the parts. 

His sleep is full of her, restless and desperate, full of ideas and plans, large scale models and miniature robots, visions of her naked in his bed, arms wrapped in circuit wire, pupils blown wide. His waking dreams as well. But he doesn’t have the bandwidth for it, not currently. He’s not sure he could do much about it even if he didn’t think that, inherently, right now, the abstinence was probably for the best. He’s so tired most days, that the energy he’s got is directed towards work, logistics, cobbling together these grants, and what’s left is spent prepping for the kids to be there.

“Bruce?”

She’s moved to the stove to put on the kettle, and now she’s looking at him over her shoulder, the pale strap of her bra showing as her sweater slips a little, a strip of skin exposed. He can feel the scowl on his face, lust truncated. He looks at her, thinks of sex, wants her and longs for her, and can’t get any further than that, hates himself for failing to circumvent his issues, the agonizing frustration of the anger, the self-doubt, the spinning, whirligig mess of his brain.

She turns to face him, and he scrubs at the back of his head. It doesn’t make any sense. He’s been keeping himself contained, getting shit done even though it’s like slogging through cold molasses, and then suddenly today, this spike of lust, this burst of bright feeling...it’s not better than the shut-down, it’s uncomfortable and embarrassing, and he should have stayed inside.

“I, uh, I should go. I was making bread.”

Warmth flares across her face, that quirked up grin, wicked and plotting, so lovely, her plan for his groceries falling into place. The fact is, he wants _her_. The sex is a side effect, at least today. He’s less interested in fucking her than just...caring for her. Having her. The sum of her. He wants to be the person he feels like when she looks at him with that devastating grin.

All that, when he barely feels like a person at all right now.

“What’s wrong?” she asks softly, rolls her bottom lip between her teeth, an unconscious gesture, and he stops retreating. 

“I’m distracted,” he says softly, and draws it out, lets her hear the curl of self-mockery. Lets her hear the arousal as well.

She tilts her head like he’s playing a game she doesn’t enjoy. “Wouldn’t want that, would we?”

“No,” he says, “Wouldn’t want that.”

She steps closer, a measured amount of distance between them, and crosses her arms. “Maybe you should go home before you get more distracted.”

There’s a difference between retreat and moving back into the fray. He’s not sure he can follow through, but he gives her what he can.

“It’s possible that I’ve confused distraction for inspiration.”

“Possibly.”

“Natasha.”

She’s not smiling any more, so serious now, gaze steady and intent. She’s been waiting him out, he realizes, waiting for him to figure out that what she wants from him isn’t going to change, whether they spend the afternoon fucking or just hanging out waiting for the bread to finish rising.

“You changed your mind?”

There’s this idea, niggling at the back of his mind, that he could make her happy by making himself happy. That the touch he’s been withholding is still more about self-inflicted punishment than finding emotional clarity. And she’s been so incredibly patient, through the parts that were necessary, as well as the parts that weren’t.

“What if I have changed my mind? What would that mean?”

She visibly fights to relax her arms, letting them drop by her sides, but still not moving any closer.

“I don’t know,” she says, honest as always. “You might change it back.”

He shakes his head, a little dizzy, and looks at her. “No,” he says, soft but determined. Then, equally determined to be honest. “Maybe.”

Her mouth is set, and she tightens her arms around herself again. “Go home, Bruce,” she says, voice soft, and there’s a hint of shame there, of sadness, and he hates himself even more. “Come back later,” she says, “if you want some company.”

He nods, heads back to his house. He takes a shower later, when the bread’s in the oven, turning it cold just long enough to take his breath, to feel like needles on his skin, and when he towels off, the lust is somewhere else.

~*~

“Quiz me,” she says. 

“Bones or vascular system?”

“Systems.”

It’s late, and his eyes feel sandy, jaw sore from clenching it as he draws. It’s a good time for a break, and he takes her flashcards - old school sure, and she’d done a massive eye roll but he’d made her compare the retention of writing them down versus flipping through terms on her tablet, and she’d conceded that in this case, he maybe had a point.

He runs her through the vascular systems, and they do bones anyway as a follow up, finishing with a triage refresher. Flush with the success of memorization, she makes them the dark, lemony holiday tea her friend Maria had sent her. He tilts his head back, closing his eyes while she’s at the stove, and doesn’t remember falling asleep and missing the tea. He wakes up several hours later, cramped and uncomfortable because she’s pushed her legs into his space and conked out herself at some point. The red throw is draped over her, bright against her pale face.

He sits up, puts his hand on her calf, and she’s so warm even through her jeans and the heavy wool socks.

“Nat,” he says, feeling gravelly and shaking her leg, “Go to bed.”

She’s bleary, and he gets up to haul her to her feet, and she leans into him, warm and sleepy and he hates himself for relishing the feeling of her lush body against his, for being worn and messy, and incapable of staying away, or committing fully. He steers her to her bedroom, should leave her there, but she fishes out the pyjama pants he’d worn a few days ago and just strips down to her underwear and t-shirt and burrows under the unmade covers, leaving it to him follow her into bed, go sleep on the couch, or go home alone. 

He lacks the willpower to do anything but crawl in after her, following her warmth, the scent of her skin, the feel of her hip bone under his palm as they curl towards each other.

~*~

It’s the pressure of light that coaxes him up from the depths and leaves him blinking, nonplussed. Natasha is out cold despite the rising illumination coming from several points in her room. She’s sleeping on her face, turned away, but her near hand is lodged under his ribs and he’s palmed the back of her head.

Her room is noticeably brighter. Bruce rolls onto his back, hand ghosting down Nat’s side and settling at the small of her back before pulling away, reluctant, respectful. A patch of dim starts in one corner and works its way across her room, like a cloud passing over the sun.

He knows it’s still dark out, and that’s an irritating thought, because it’s quite nice in here.

~*~

“Angie grew up in New York. She’d never driven anything until we caravanned out here. Sink or swim, and we made it with the clutch intact. Barely.”

Peggy indicates that Nat should head down into the back parking lot of the high school. Fresh snowfall covers an inevitable layer of ice on the eastern side.

“Clint and I managed about ten minutes of a single lesson before the mutual yelling ended with me high centered on a median. I threw the keys at him so hard it gave him a black eye and walked home.”

Peggy has a hand loosely resting on the Jeep’s dash. The truck is fresh from the mechanic, new all-weather tires proving to be the biggest expense so far on the vehicle. 

“You’re going to slide, but don’t slam on the brakes and fight it. Slow down, ease into it, and accept that you might hit something, but that it doesn’t have to be a disaster. Ice is the killer. Snow’s just messy. Accidents you walk away from are just inconveniences.”

Nat accelerates a little across the snow, heading for a patch that looks shiny. She’s right and the tires fail to grip completely. The back end shimmies and swerves and she breathes through the slide, hands on the wheel, regaining control.

Peggy remains calm, gives her an approving nod.

“You’ve taught teenagers to do this?”

“On occasion. Most kids who grow up here learn early, are driving far before the legal age. But when we get children who are here with parents doing residencies, testing out the winter landscape, I’ve given a few lessons. “

“You’re a better teacher than Clint. Eventually, Laura took me out, helped me get a license. She had a crappy little Honda. It was nearly indestructible.”

“And you gave David his first lesson as well, so you’re passing it on.”

“The Probe deserved it. Plus, I didn’t really have any other leverage with him. He called the other day though. Got his permit.”

They take the loop faster at another angle, and the car does a donut. Nat’s hands are easy on the wheel, confident as she learns. The spinning is exhilarating once she knows what to do.

“Angie said she followed you here.”

Peggy’s smile is fond, warmth and kindness, the longevity of her love expansive. “It’s more like she just said _I’m coming with you_ , and I didn’t say no. I didn’t say yes. I’m not sure I deserved that kind of devotion; I certainly hadn’t earned it. But she was so determined. Kept just barreling through the challenges, the driving least amongst them, and then I didn’t want to say no anymore.”

“She wore you down?” Nat laughs at that. She’s been the recipient of Angie’s terrier focus herself.

But Peggy is thoughtful. “No, not exactly. She just kept showing me why I couldn’t live without her. Or rather why I shouldn’t. And one day I realized that even if I could, I didn’t want to. She didn’t just make my life better, she made everyone’s life better. And I started to see how I could do that for her.”


	13. Holiday Huddle

It’s not like they decide to deceive - themselves or anyone else. It’s something they fall into the morning Bruce’s kids arrive and Ellie invites Nat with them to lunch. She has a gift card for a chain restaurant at the good mall, and she wants to treat.

She waits in the kitchen while Natasha ties up her boots, fiddling with a bat wing the size of her palm that Nat’s been trying to animate, stainless steel hypodermic tubing and scraps of black silk damask. “Is this for the gryphon? A bat wing is more taxonomically sound.”

Nat shrugs into her coat, “Materials are lighter, more flexible. I’d love it to be wind responsive.”

They talk about the evolution of flight on the way back toward the house, but Ellie detours her through the garage first. She has her own key, and she’s clearly both checking out the space and letting Nat see her do it. “Wood pile looks okay. I know David still owes him some, but Dad keeps a couple years’ cushion on that, so the wood has time to season.” She lifts the lid on the massive chest freezer and digs through the contents.

Nat holds the lid open, and Ellie leans half of her body into it, sorting and arranging a summer’s worth of batch cooking stashed in freezer bags and recycled food containers, bringing some items to the top. She hands up a few loaves of zucchini bread and closes the lid, looking at it in thought for a long moment. When she turns to Nat, the incisive expression sharpens.

“Find what you were looking for?” Nat asks, shifting the loaves in one arm.

“It’s been worse,” Ellie says, “It’s usually better.”

Nat had read the lists Bruce was compiling in the diner months ago, knowing his handwriting so well that upside down text was no challenge. Ellie’s been running through an abbreviated version of that checklist, her own Christmas Break ritual like Bruce actually turning his heat up above sixty. “He assures me he has a system.”

“Yeah, he does.” Ellie locks the garage door behind them. “It’s all about getting through the winter.”

Bruce is brighter and acutely present with his kids in the house, echoes of the energy of summer, but it’s not effortless, Nat can see that. It’s muscle memory and pushing through the discomfort, it’s playing through pain. She’s fascinated and compelled, watching him navigate the crowded parking lot, his intense focus on catching up with whatever he hasn’t heard already over Skype in the intervening months, the way he braces himself before stepping into the stuffy brightness of the mall at the holidays.

He reaches for her hand. She gives it, anchoring him.

It’s his knee pressed against hers under the table. It’s letting him fussily arrange her scarf when they step back into the cold. It’s helping him in the kitchen, and sitting next to him on the couch, and a hundred small gestures of comfort that are liberties taken, but no less tender or real.

Their working hypothesis of platonic friendship is oddly suspended for the duration of the holidays, replaced with a chaste physical affection. It evens Bruce out, and Nat has really missed touching him, and she’s willing to table any discussion for when their house guests are all gone.

~*~

Natasha brings the axe down into the log with good force and accurate aim, but it’s clear she’s inexperienced. The axe sticks.

It doesn’t matter. Like all of it, she’ll figure it out quickly. She’s nimble and agile, beautiful in motion.

Also, possibly going to chop off her foot with the axe. Bruce winces, forces his focus back to the waffle batter. “David, in about ten minutes, you wanna go round up Nat and then offer to finish up that wood pile for her?”

Ellie snorts. “Is the goal to make her suffer first?” She’s cutting up strawberries and bananas for a fruit salad.

“No,” Bruce says, stirring the batter, setting it aside, prepping the griddle. “It’s to let her wear herself out enough that she’ll agree when David goes out there and offers to help, instead of rolling her eyes and sending him back inside.”

“You think that’s likely?”

He shrugs. “She’s pretty determined. It could go either way, but David still has some debt to pay off.”

“Six months, dad. You’re not gonna let it go yet?”

“Four months.” He raises an eyebrow at his son. “You ran away from home to meet a girl, but played it like you were checking in on me. You scared the shit out of your mom and I. You…no, I’m probably not gonna let it go until you’re forty, and then I’ll carp at your kids about it.”

~*~

“Are you kidding me? This is a thing? Is this really a thing?”

“We do it every year.” Ellie pours milk into her coffee from the cow creamer that had appeared with the boxes of decorations. 

“Because there’s no other option? Like buying one from Target. You know I bet Phil’s team could make you one. Hell, Bruce, you could make one. It might end up looking like it wants to eat us, but…”

“It’s fun,” David says, eating his sixth piece of toast. “Really.”

Bruce hands her a coffee cup with a grin. “It’s every bit as teeth-rotting idyllic fantasy Christmas as it sounds. But yes, also kind of fun.”

“Overcompensating early on?” she accepts the coffee, uses the cow creamer because to not would be an insult to the cow creamer, whose large painted eyes look on the verge of tears.

“Maybe a little.”

She kisses his cheek, because this whole thing sounds like a Hallmark-tinged nightmare but she’s gonna put on her pompom hat and they’re going to chop down a goddamned Christmas tree.

“Two,” David says. “You need a tree, too.”

“Oh god,” Nat says. “Ornaments.”

~*~

Natasha finds herself settling into the foreign country headspace when she sees the hay wagon hitched to draft horses with sleigh bells. This is...a thing...like using a Japanese bathroom or getting through a conversation about Burning Man. Cultural discomfort is fine, it’s growth. She turns to Bruce, as the kids climb up and Ellie ignores David’s hand up with a terse, “Just ‘cause you’re taller now--”

Bruce smirks at her and gestures toward the wagon with his hand saw.

“Is this why you haven’t shaved? Some kind of lumberjack fantasy?”

“No. I haven’t shaved because I’m lazy. And Ellie and David do all the sawing. It’s a thing,” he waves it off, “long story. I’ll help you with yours if you want.”

The trees are tagged with species and height, and Natasha finds out she has a platonic ideal of a Christmas tree in her head. She also finds out that the wagon driver has a chainsaw, and Ellie has a thermos of boozy hot chocolate, which she shares as the trees are wrapped in twine nets and laid into the back of the truck.

Her ass is numb from the cold, her gloves sticky with sap, and Bruce cajoles her out of buying a cheap tree stand at the makeshift shop set up at the farm.

When they get home, Nat and David put a dinner together while Bruce and Ellie disappear into the garage for an hour, coming out with a freshly fashioned heavy gauge tree stand, a companion to the one holding Bruce’s tree straight and tall.

~*~

The kids bicker amiably, wrapping strands of lights around the branches in a clearly long practiced pattern of Ellie directing, and David reluctantly following her instructions.

Nat’s sitting on the floor in front of her couch, staring up at the tree like it’s some strange alien object. Sprawled behind her, Bruce is softly running his thumb over the knob of her spine, soothing but with the occasional feathery stroke of his nail up her nape that runs through her like electricity. She leans into his touch.

“I mean I have some weird holiday stuff that people have given me over the years, but it’s not like I put up lights or had a tree or anything before. I was busy, or I’d go wherever Clint and Laura were stationed, or to friends’. Steve had a tree one year.”

“Kids come with a lot of holiday detritus,” he says with a chuckle,”but we’ve still got a box of stuff from that first year, before I’d figured out how to do this myself. It’ll be fine. When they get here, go up to the city, hit Target, buy everything that catches your eye. Or leave it blank. The lights will look nice.”

She’s not just making an effort, there’s meaning here, bringing the people who had raised her into her home, providing this holiday. “No, the tree needs ornaments. We’ll get ornaments. Or make them.”

Ellie turns to her, holding onto the lights. “Let me tell you a little bit about making ornaments…”

“Never gonna live down the glue gun explosion, am I?”

~*~

Bruce leans over and unplugs the bean crusted crockpot, faintly amused at the shell-shocked look that came out from behind Natasha’s pleasant demeanor when she found herself alone with him. Her house is overrun with people, and the kitchen looks like a church social exploded; trays of pre-prepped Swedish meatballs and roasted chicken, the remains of a spiral ham, empty two liters and labeled plastic cups and a sink full of dishes.

She downs a glass of ice water and lays the cold glass against her forehead. “I can see now why my brother was so eager to haul his family out here for the holiday.”

“At least they’re all playing nice.” Bruce slides his hand under her hair and kneads at her neck, watching her eyes flutter shut. He’s taking advantage of the situation, the ability to touch her and the lack of any expectation for follow-through with both their houses packed with guests. It’s tailored to what he can give right now, and he’s weak for giving in, maybe, but he’s trying to give her some value for it.

“Nat! Bring the nog when you come back out!” Clint calls from the living room. He’s mediating a hotly contested game of Settlers of Catan where Lila is pretty much wiping the floor with the other three.

Ellie asks, “Aren’t judges supposed to be sober?”

Bruce huffs with pride.

“I’ll take his nog!” Laura pipes up

Nat moves in slow mo so as not to dislodge the neck massage, pulling the carton out of the fridge and opening it up, calling out with a sad disappointment, “Oh no, it’s all gone…” and pouring the balance into a coffee mug along with a healthy slug of bourbon.

~*~

All nine of them are jammed into the corner booth in the diner, kids on laps and Nate wobbling around from hand to hand at the outside edges of the table, Clint resting his leg on a chair. 

“I wanna hear about the cake,” Lila is adamant, but Cooper’s eyes are big with it as well. Family anticipation, stories passed down, even if this one has been heavily modified for youthful consumption.

She catches Clint’s eye, and he shrugs. “You really want to hear about the Christmas your dad and I ate a whole chocolate cake between us?”

“Us?” He barks out a laugh. “I had a piece, you’re the one who ate the rest.”

Lila looks dreamy. “I want to eat an entire cake.”

“It’s not as fun as it sounds pumpkin. I threw up cake for hours after.”

They’re back at Nat’s later when she gives them the whole story. Ellie sits in one of the recliners, while Bruce has grabbed one of the dining room chairs, and he can see on his daughter’s face, that questioning, quiet look that signals laying low to be an unnoticed part of the adult conversation. David is engrossed in texting, no points for guessing who.

Clint has his head in his wife’s lap, and she’s stroking his hair. 

“My dad didn’t really think much of Christmas,” Nat said in explanation. “He didn’t have childhood memories of it, came over from Russia when he was a teenager, so celebrating was always hit or miss. But that year, he’d decided we were gonna do an American Christmas because Bev wanted something normal.”

Clint chuckled darkly at that. “I think she was angling for something that year, I don’t know what, but yeah. She even made dinner, chicken--”

“This really garlicky chicken, the whole house stunk. She was so effing proud.”

“--and she bought this cake from the grocery store, not a sheet one, but a real round layer cake. We all sat down, started to eat, and then Ivan and I got into a fight, and I didn’t even see where Nat went until later.”

“I left, went into the basement, put on my headphones. The neighbors came over, invited dad and Bev for a drink.”

“They were having a party that night, and when they heard Ivan and I going at it, they wanted to cool things down so it wouldn’t come to cops after their guests arrived. Everyone loves a Christmas party.”

“So Clint had bugged out for awhile, then Bev and Ivan bugged out for the whole night, and it was just me and that cake I’d been staring at all day.”

Clint turns to look at her. “You were so mad, even when I got back. You were sitting in the middle of the table facing down that cake like it was a gunfight. You didn’t care about the presents or the plastic tree Bev had picked up, or that stupid chicken dinner. You didn’t even care that they were gone, you were fixated on that cake.”

“So Clint decided we’d eat it anyway. But then, I...couldn’t stop. I just… I hadn’t eaten dinner, and it was gooey, and sweet and I just...kept going because there was no one to tell me no. I finally got it that no one was going to, not really. And so...”

“She showed that cake who was boss.” Clint finished. “All of that cake.”

Nat groaned. “And then the cake took revenge. So much vomiting. It was years before I could eat any kind of cake again.”

“I’ll eat your cake, Aunt Nat.” Lila reassures. “And your mac & cheese.”

“You’re a good team player, baby.” Nat sweeps her up and spins her around, and all the Bartons have a chuckle. 

Bruce wants to check in with Nat, but he’s more concerned, frankly, for Ellie. His daughter has rewritten and recounted some of the pain of her own past, gained enough of an adult perspective to hear the unsaid underbelly of the story the kids have just taken at face value; to decode the encrypted family history being passed down. Her eyes are wide, and he lays his fingers on her wrist so she knows he’s there, that he heard too, that sometimes we help by bearing witness and letting that person move on as they choose.

~*~

Laura and Nat show up in the kitchen to take Ellie to Sam’s kick-boxing class. “For post-holiday exertions,” Nat says, with a smirk.

Laura shakes her head. “Not for me, I’m in it entirely to objectify the instructor.” 

“Enjoy,” Bruce says. “Pretty sure that Sam chooses his pants with the aim of being objectified.”

Laura sighs dreamily. “He’s doing the Lord’s work.”

Nat laughs, giving him a wink. “So am I,” she says.

Laura’s phone rings, and she answers it, puzzled. “Baby, what’s up?” She listens, then looks at Nat, hands her the phone.

“Lila wants to go with the big girls,” she says, “She’s got quite the crush on Ellie. I think it’s the hair.”

Nat hands back the phone, and heads back to her house to get her niece.

“Would you mind,” Laura says, “checking in with the boys? I know it’s a hassle, and Coop can make himself PB&J, but sometimes Nate’s a handful, and Clint’s still not real nimble. I just...we wanted to get lunch, meander maybe, since the sun is shining.”

Bruce nods. “At the very least, I’ll send David over with some food.”

Laura shrugs. “As long as everyone’s alive when we get back.”

~*~

He actually goes over himself around noon to see if any of them need anything. Clint looks a little harried, but Cooper is building ever higher structures of blocks and then knocking them all down to Nate’s intense delight. Every few minutes, Nate picks up the blocks himself and tries to toddle off into a corner with them, crashing inevitably to the floor with a wail, which delights his older brother. That cycle of destruction seems to be keeping everyone entertained temporarily.

“You guys doing okay?” Bruce is a little hesitant himself around Nat’s brother. Wary, maybe. Clint doesn’t give much away, aside from radiating a fierce protectiveness towards his family, and a deep, sly, surprising sense of humor that had won David’s eternal admiration. 

“We’re cool,” Clint says with a sigh, “Except I can’t figure out how to set up this damned gaming platform, and I don’t know where the hell my sister keeps the peanut butter.”

Bruce sees an opening. “I think I can help with both.”

David drives a hard bargain about the tech support, and he wonders if Nat's been giving him pointers. “Yeah, sure I’ll do it, but...well, Daisy’s in town tonight and I know we’re supposed to have dinner…”

Bruce rolls his eyes. “Fine, fine, you do this, and I’ll even bankroll your date.”

David’s eyes go a little dark, and he shakes his head, “No, it’s cool, Mom gave me some money.”

“David, it’s fine. I can pay for Paco’s and a movie.”

He slaps peanut butter and assorted jams onto half a loaf of bread, eyes David, adds the other half. “Keep the money from your mom, buy yourself something you want that you didn’t get.” 

“Thanks Dad,” he says, still a little hesitant, and goes to set up the system, running Clint and the kids through using the controllers.

Clint wolfs down a sandwich, then scoops up Nate, stretches his leg out on the couch with his son tucked against him, and shares a second one with the toddler.

Bruce recognizes the gritty taste of Clint's determined expression, the way it hardens once the kids are engrossed in the game, the way it softens to something almost desperate every time he offers the sandwich to Nate's tiny clipper teeth. “Still in a lot of pain?”

Clint shrugs, but it's as good as a nod. They might not be technically related, but that's a gesture the siblings share. “Yeah. It’ll get better though. I just don’t want Laura to see it. Or the kids. I can suck it up, but sometimes, it’s nice not to have to.”

David christens the system with the Lego game Cooper’d gotten for Christmas, while Clint sighs a little over _Call of Duty_ , resting untouched in his stocking which still hangs from the fireplace.

“I know, I know,” he grouses as Bruce chuckles. “A retired soldier, and you’d think the last thing I’d want to do is shoot a bunch of shit, but man it’s so satisfying when there’s no actual bodies.”

Bruce takes his word for it.

Clint’s the one who brings up Nat, and it’s roundabout, not a question about their relationship, but about her general happiness here. There’s a sincerity to his inquiry that makes Bruce a little breathless, that someone cares enough about her to want her happy in such a specific way.

“I hate seeing her disappointed, adrift,” Clint says. “I can take anything else, even her being pissed at me.”

Cooper stands up, and hands his remote to Clint. “This part’s tricky dad. Help.”

Clint focuses on a complex flight maneuver, looks at the screen, keeps talking. “When I enlisted, it was an easy decision but hard to tell her...I promised to be there, take care of her, but I couldn’t get a decent job, and she was so...I was barely nineteen, grades were shit but I test really well, and joining up meant that I could send her money, get some education. Laura and I had started dating, and she offered to help look after Nat. Gave her a safe place to crash--that could have ended so badly, but Nat was careful, like she was the one taking care of Laura while I was gone.”

Bruce wonders how much of that care was motivated by enlightened self-interest, and how much by Nat’s family feeling toward Clint. A nineteen year old sharing her first apartment with her boyfriend’s fourteen year old truant stepsister; his respect for Laura’s sheer balls intensifies.

Clint pauses to execute a flurry of buttons, then hands back the controller and keeps his eyes on Cooper’s follow-through. “The way she looked at me when I told her I was leaving, for training, it was like I’d shot her. Just...utter betrayal. But then she shut down, like it was nothing. She can do that. Put it away. But it’s there.”

That day at the diner, Bruce had watched her do that very thing. Take her hurt and disappointment, fold it into herself so that no one could use it against her.

He wonders how often she does it these days, under the guise of calm acceptance. He wonders if he’ll ever be able to get inside that reflex again. He thinks maybe he shouldn’t even try to be someone she considers safe, but...he’d rather bear the burden of it, wear it like chains than know she’s holding pain deep and fast where no one can make it better.

~*~

“Remember the first time you helped me get Lila ready for school? I came upstairs and you two were both mid-meltdown.”

“Yeah.” Nat strokes Lila’s hair away from her face. She twitches, pressed into Nat’s side, small fists finally lax. Laura’s on the other side of her daughter in the guest bedroom, hand making slow circles on her warm belly.

As a small one, Cooper had needed to be bored to sleep in a darkened quiet room. When Lila is fighting a nap, a snuggle and quiet talking is what helps her downshift into sleep. Nate just drops off like a very old man, right in the thick of things.

“I think…every other kid, you have to limit their options. You can’t ask them what they want to wear, right? You have to ask do you want the orange or the pink, these shoes or those? Too many choices and their brains explode. Or they wear that goddamned princess dress to preschool three weeks in a row so that the rest of the parents think I’m a terrible mother.”

“Burning it may have been overkill,” Nat laughs, and Laura pokes at her with her toes.

“It smelled like vomit no matter how many times I washed it.”

“That’s not true. At the end it smelled like barf and bleach.”

Laura pulls the shirt down over Lila’s belly and just cups it. “With you, it was different; all of your options were bad to begin with, but you survived to spite all that. The trick was to keep you from burning the world down long enough to give you more options. You know, so that worked out pretty well.”

Natasha’s smile is rueful. “Clint has some reservations about the whole ‘art colony mid-life crisis’.”

“Pshhh.” Laura rolls her eyes fondly. “His idea of reaching goal is the whole picket fence thing, because that’s his happy place. Last time he was stateside you were working like a dog. He wants to know you’re taken care of, and he’s still catching up with you taking care of yourself, being a woman of leisure.”

“You make it sound like I know what I’m doing here.”

“You’ve got friends, and you’re clearly having fun, and I think you’re making a place, making something meaningful here. You look happy.” Laura rises slowly, edging off the bed and tucking an afghan around her daughter like nesting material. 

Nat doesn’t tuck away the smile or the moisture in her eyes; Laura’s always been able to slay her with open emotional honesty, and she’s long since stopped pretending that wasn’t true.

“So maybe, this is what comes from finally having a smorgasbord of options, instead of two clenched fists.”

Nat joins her at the doorway. The afghan is not one she’s bought, but a riot of purple yarn Clint had casually flung onto her couch when they arrived, like an afterthought instead of a gift. One end is rough, when he was still learning, but the other end is smooth and even.

Laura pulls the door almost shut and gives Nat a smile that her fourteen year old self would have wanted to punch, but her thirty year old self sees is honest and true. “Clint’ll figure it out, too, he’s just got get all the bitching out first. You two are the same. You’ve gotta voice the worst case scenario, run it to ground, put it to bed, then pretend it never even crossed your mind. ”

~*~

It’s six in the morning but Bruce has been inexplicably up since before five, staring into the dark, so he finally gives up on sleep and creeps into the kitchen to make coffee.

He doesn’t actually see Ellie until he’s already started the pot, leaning sleep-dazed against the counter, scrubbing at the back of his head, and catching a glimpse of ambient light. She’s curled onto the couch, looking at the tablet in her hand with this soft expression he’s never seen on her face, and he can’t hear what she’s saying, but he knows what she looks like when her kindness and warmth are out in full force. He doesn’t need to hear the words to know she’s telling someone she loves them. Him. Her, maybe? He doesn’t know. Ellie’s always been so desperately private about her emotions, her romantic leanings.

He looks away, not wanting to cop to what he’d seen. The living room isn’t exactly private, but she probably also didn’t expect company at dawn and the wifi had always been far better in there than in the bedrooms. Since Tony’d been there the whole property was like a giant wireless hub, but he hadn’t bothered to pass that along to the kids.

The coffee finishes brewing quickly because he’d only made enough to take a cup back into his room.

He tries to stay in the shadow, not let Ellie see that he’d noticed her, but she looks up, startled, eyes wide, and he gives her a half shrug, a smile, holds out the mug in offering, but she shakes her head.


	14. Hot January

Bruce’s family leaves after Christmas, and the Barton’s stay through New Year’s, celebrating at Peggy’s with champagne and sparkly hats, the kids desperate to make it to midnight, cranky and fitful, dozing in the recliners.

At midnight Angie grabs Bruce by the scruff of his cheeks to kiss him, while Peggy kisses Laura with an enthusiasm and a smear of lipstick that ends up on Clint a moment later. Laura murmurs to her husband afterward, canoodling in a way that makes Natasha look away, but then she sees Peggy and Angie pressed close and intense.

Nat keeps turning, as if she meant to step into Bruce’s arms like a dance, a Ginger Rogers smile and sweep of her feet to cover the awkward pause when she clocks the expression on his face.

She’s coming to hate that look because it’s so close to hope, and she knows he won’t sustain it, but she puts her hand on his chest and he leans in, and it’s still a dance, the caress of hands, the tangle of his fingers in her hair, the gentle, tangible sweetness of the kiss, dry from the champagne, a kiss she can feel all the way through her body, can feel reverberate through his.

The weather has since turned serious about the snow, as if it’d been waiting for their respective families to depart, as if the environment were also in on the soft ruse of them being a casual couple, when they are neither a couple nor anything close to casual anymore.

She is not weak. But neither is she immune, and the last few weeks had been agonizing, promising all these things that came down to the feel of him under her palms, against her mouth, pressed body to body, and ultimately fulfilling nothing because he’s determined to make them end.

It’s that kiss Natasha thinks of when she wakes up with Bruce’s hand splayed across her stomach, the seam of his worn jeans digging into her hip, his face nuzzled against her shoulder.

The past few days alone with him there hasn’t been any excuse, aside from the cold outside and the warmth of his skin, the isolation of the snow coaxing them to tuck up together here, his own house back down to its winter chill, and she hates him in this moment in a way she never has.

It vibrates through her like that kiss still does, hot resentment for offering what he won’t give, for being too weak to keep it in check. She hates herself as well, for not being able to resist the tease, for grabbing the solace no matter how ultimately empty. For wanting so goddamned much what she can’t have. This isn’t something she does, and she’s had no idea how to stop, letting him stay late into the night and crawl into bed with her again instead of booting him out, sending him home.

And yet, she doesn’t shift his arm until he begins to stir. Then it boils out of her, seething, and she rolls to her feet and throws a bathrobe on over the t-shirt and yoga pants she slept in, stalking to the kitchen to start coffee without looking back.

Not trusting herself to.

The lake water has turned to a thick slurry, rolling waves making a creaking shushing sound, circular patterns forming and breaking in the slush. It’s otherworldly, remembering the mosquitoes and rain and the suffocating humidity. She loves the waterline even more now, a mess of ice accreting from chunks to boulders to fantastic wind-honed shapes. 

Bruce brings her a cup of coffee, bleary-eyed and concerned.

She can’t fold it away any tighter and that doesn’t work anyway, it still hurts, so she decides to no longer contain it. Maybe if she shoves this back at him, it’ll bring some ease. “It stops today, Bruce.”

The fact that he doesn’t need to ask what stops, that he just places the cup gently in her hands and nods, head down...this infuriates her even more.

That he doesn’t fight. That he knows he’s been taking advantage and just waiting for her to call him on it. That he’s already looking for his boots to slink away next door.

“I’ve been patient.” Hot ceramic begins to burn her hand as she clutches the cup, as the pressure cracks her open and she aims the shrapnel at him. “But you need to make a decision already. A real decision. I get that it’s hibernation season, you’re just hanging on; you don’t have to put out, you don’t have to give me much, hell, any more than you already are - I can take care of myself and wait for you to come around - but I need to know that’s what we’re doing.”

“Nat--”

“If this is a thing, us together, I can wait for you. Keep the home fires burning.”

He’s shaking his head, but she’s closing the distance, ditching the cup on a table with a slosh of coffee that scalds her fingers.

“If we’re a couple, we have to talk about this. But we don’t--we aren’t...we’re friends instead, fumbling at this like we’re shoplifting candy, and I just can’t anymore. It stops.”

“Look--” It comes out loud and he clenches, dialing it back as he drops onto her couch and shoves his boots on. “You’re right, I’ve been selfish about this. It’s not fair to keep you from finding someone you can--”

“Oh fuck _you_ , Banner.”

He looks up, startled.

She scents blood, and old instincts kick in. “You don’t get to play this off like you’re doing me a favor, cutting me loose. Like you’re resigning so I can find someone more qualified.”

His hackles are rising. “I told you, I’m not good for the people around me, I get like this and--”

“And I still want you around, did you not notice? Haven’t we spent the last few weeks proving how fucking terrible we are at platonic? All I’m saying is that I need to know what the hell this really is, Bruce. You can’t keep sleeping in my bed like the goddamned family dog.”

He stands up, boots unlaced, and stalks to the side door where his coat hangs.

She paces him, “That’s it, then. I don’t even get a reply.”

He rounds on her, shoving arms into his coat. “What do you want me to say?”

“You’re a grown man, you tell me! What do you have to say? Are you even going to fight for this? Or was it only about stealing the scraps you could and then slinking off when I say boo?”

“You’re the one who was gonn--” His breathing is harsh, his fists white knuckled. “You just told me to leave.”

“I told you to decide; are you in or out? But you’ve got your coat on, so I guess there’s my answer.” She turns away and goes to pick up her coffee cup, steadying the shake in her hand even if she can’t curb her vitriol or the tightness in her throat. “Don’t let me keep you.”

“Natasha--”

“I’ve got shit I need to do today, too.” She’s talking into her cup just loud enough to carry. “Should change my sheets, they’re covered in dog hair.”

He chokes on the first sound of her name, and the slam of her door comes swiftly after.

She drinks her coffee, standing in her living room and feeling a kind of scrubbed hollowness. It’s better than the pressure, the hot resentment clawing out of her, but she thinks maybe there just isn’t any satisfaction to be had.

The banging catches her attention.

~*~

Bruce did this to himself, that’s the thing. Stealing candy, she called it, and that had slid right between his ribs, dead on. He’d seen this coming from the beginning, that it would end, but he hadn’t let go cleanly, and he hadn’t held tight either, and he’d been the one to fuck it up.

He’d broken her open after all; finally saw the hurt and disappointment he’d been building in her all along. 

Good job, asshole. As Angie says, well-played.

The garage door crackles as he throws it open, raining broken sheets of ice at his feet. It’s been a long time since he’s felt this visceral seizing anger, this inchoate loathing. He’d forgotten some things.

He feels awake and strong and horrible, his heart sick in his chest, everything that had been blunted for months slamming into him at once. Fear and longing, dread and lost joy, the place by her side he’d been clinging to and that his clothes still smelled like and that she’d finally taken away because he’d been too broken to stay and too weak to leave.

The muscles in his arms twitch, his face hot, and he wraps his hand around the ten pound lump hammer because it’s something to take the brunt of it, but the anvil…is half covered with Ethelred’s original head.

He’d shifted it off the workbench to hold the fucking chickens, and it hangs off the pointed horn of the anvil like a dead longhorn skull off a fence, half cannibalized for her robotics course, a mocking memento mori of how much time he’d wasted with nothing to show but ruin and a broken system.

Bruce has no place to put the damned thing, it’s too big to stay, too incomplete to ever become something finished. It makes sense to disarticulate it, he thinks.

It’s better than whaling on the anvil with the sledge like fucking Donkey Kong. It’s better than losing his grip in her house, or even his, which is why he’d come into the workshop in the first place. It makes sense to channel the frustration into a large brute job of work. At least it makes sense at that moment, chisel in one hand and sledge in the other.

He’d forgotten how rational and clear it felt to let the rage make decisions. He’d forgotten that the rage makes even shittier decisions than he does.

He sets the chisel against the first weld and bares his teeth as it bites into the metal.

The jaw, the horns, the spiky occipital fins hit the floor of the garage. He stops to rip out a bundle of wiring and knock the propane burner out of the throat, then splits the muzzle in two until the anvil is now bare and Ethelred lies in pieces at his feet.

He’s pouring sweat, still in his unfastened coat, and he tosses the sledge onto the anvil with one last muted clang and he bends to catch his breath.

He looks down at it, at the raw edged pieces of scrap metal he’s made of this beautiful thing, and that’s when he remembers what he’d forgotten. His breath is ragged in his throat, his nose running from the heat in his blood meeting the cold, from the tears of rage at himself and his brain. 

There’s a slurp.

Bruce drags his sleeve across his face and tries not to choke. He forces himself to straighten, and look at her.

Natasha stands in the snow of his workyard, in her fuzzy robe and open boots, cup steaming in her hand. He suddenly feels his chisel still clutched in his own. It’s the fucking Christmas Tree all over again, but deadly silent so he can really appreciate the devastation he’s wrought of the first damned thing they built together. The wind rattles through the branches above and stirs her hair as she bears witness with steady regard.

Bruce flings the chisel behind him, arms spread, waiting for the killing blow.

Nat shrugs. “Feel better?”

His breath spasms out, a bitter laugh and a sob all at once. “No.”

She doesn’t move, as if she isn’t freezing out here. She finally tilts her head and asks, “You sure?”

“No…” He shakes his head, at a loss with both himself and with her. Who the hell is she to watch him do this to something beautiful she made, and then ask this, like if it helped that would be okay? He’s confounded. He feels raw inside and out in the wake of the rage. "No, I'm not sure."

She sips thoughtfully, and walks back to her own house.

~*~

Natasha sits at her kitchen table, working her way through a strong pot of coffee in the company of the small metal menagerie she’s accumulated; chickens and a gryphon, the Hydra and the now orphaned baby Ethelred.

That had been ugly and violent, but fascinating, to see the energy and passion rise up from the dull winter version of him. Like Iceland. Glaciers and pockets of lava. He’d burst open with frustration and hurt, been unhinged with it, but there was a method even so. He’d steered that massive amount of energy out of her house, away from people, and exorcised it in relative safety.

“Shame about your mom, though.” Nat strokes the back of the little dragon. “Happens to the best of us.”

She’d sensed that energy coiled inside Bruce from the beginning, the veneer of calm and the uncanny discipline to channel into his work what one could arguably label a certain amount of mania. But this Bruce is just as real, the overtired nihilistic crank who keeps losing the plot but keeps slogging away anyway, keeps doing what needs to be done.

It’s a relay race. His summer self runs until he’s exhausted, for the sheer joy of running in the sun. His winter self trudges through the snow, bitching all the way, painfully aware of the pointlessness of the race, but determined to hand that baton back over to the guy who actually gives a shit.

There’s something soothing about a guy who doesn’t feel hope, but keeps acting in accordance with the idea of it.

~*~

Peggy has cleared about a quarter of her workshop for him, made sure there’s a flat surface, extension cords and decent outlets. A small space heater for when the solar panels don’t do enough to keep it livable.

It’s got good light, and a solid stability--and it’s not his workshop, designed and honed over the years for his comfort and use. Right now, that’s the boon of this place.

The broken pieces of the dragon head are set carefully in three rows on the edge of the table. They’re untouched, and over the past three days Peggy has yet to see him make any effort at repair. Instead, they seem to be keeping watch.

She doesn’t chastise. In fact, she doesn’t ask him anything, just gives him the space, offers him use of her tools. They don’t talk much that first day, as he lays out a set of modular components that connect like vertebrae, pins up drawings that look like whales made of bone. She picks up the mandible of the dragon’s jaw, hefts it, and gives him a shrewd look not devoid of kindness. Whatever it is he’s seeking here in her workshop, it clearly isn’t ease.

It’s not Peggy’s job to make him feel better about his failings, he thinks. Although, she always has in her practical way, by not allowing him to wallow in them.

The next day, Angie comes into the workshop with a thermos of hot chocolate. She sits up on the work bench and cradles a section of Ethelred’s broken skull in her lap, delicate fingers tracing the orbital arch.

Bruce finally admits out loud that he’s terrified he’s once again ruined something beautiful.

~*~

Nat stays at WrekerWerks far past when the apprentices leave. Phil allows it as long as he’s in his office working out the last minute details for the salon, but he won’t allow her to sleep on the couch.

“Go home,” he says, reaching slowly to pull the super fine sandpaper from her hand. “Clear your head.”

“I want it perfect,” she says, blinking past the burn in her eyes.

“It is perfect,” he says, “Anything else will ruin it, and you can’t use art to avoid your life.”

She bites out, “Says who?”

“Okay, fair point,” Phil shrugs. “You can do what you want; you just can’t do it here. I don’t want to pay the heating bill just so you can avoid your house. Now, are you okay to drive home?”

~*~

Bruce almost calls Bob to adjust his order; nothing green, nothing to bake with. It takes him a minute to remember that he’s on his own again, solely responsible for himself, and no one else.

He sits in the kitchen chair, pulls the tablet towards him, stares at the black screen for a long time. Flicks it on, starts a new list. Remembers that Nat was helping Bob with an online version for weekly orders. Flips to his contacts, and ends up dialing Tony.

Tony has grease in a smear across his forehead and is wearing an undershirt and work gloves. It’s quite a sight, but it’s Tony who goggles at Bruce.

“Kermit, who killed your dog?”

“So, about that,” he swallows hard. “Remember how we talked about what I deserve?”

“You fuck things up?” Tony’s voice is so unexpectedly compassionate it’s debilitating, and Bruce feels kind of watery, weak and shaky.

“How did you know...with you and Pepper,” he asks, “How did you know that you could live up to that? Change enough to not disappoint her?”

Tony rubs his jaw, smearing grease further along his cheeks. “She knows me,” he says finally, “At my worst. And that makes me try to be my best.”

“She’s seen you at your worst, and stayed.”

Tony’s voice changes as he signals to Jarvis to alter the angle. “Bruce, you at your worst is pretty fucking terrifying.”

He digs his fingers into his hair and pulls hard. “I know.”

“Whoa, down boy,” Tony says, “Easy. You haven’t been anything like worst for years, and I’m sorry, it takes you longer than this to unravel. If you were falling apart completely, you’d have already been a mess when I was there.”

He’s not wrong, but it’s hollow comfort. “I’m sorry, Tony. I didn’t mean to...how are you? Should you be doing...whatever it is you’re doing?”

“I’m building a robot,” he says. “I’m allowed. Well, I’m mostly allowed. I’m not even a little bit allowed but I was losing my mind, so I decided to build a robot instead of losing my mind, which would also be a loss to the world.”

“I should have called Pepper,” Bruce says. 

~*~

Sam drinks his beer, squints at her. “You’re signed up for the second level SARS, the weekend sessions, right? You could do the EMT training in March, or the second level of that too if you keep going at this rate.”

Nat considers this. “Maybe. I want to be prepared, be able to help. But I’m not sure I want to be in the boat, fishing people out of the water. I’m not even sure I won’t throw up in the boat.”

Sam tilts his beer at her across a table that’s several generations of sticky. “You’re rocking it out. You’re not gonna puke in the boat.”

She grins at him, lazily amused.

His smile goes a bit soft, and he gives her a slow blink and takes a breath, “Can I ask you something else?”

She nods.

“What, um, what if I asked you to have dinner?”

She can feel her face even out, smoothing to not give anything away. “I’m always up for dinner.”

He gives her a long steady look. Then shakes his head. “Yeah, okay.”

“Sam, I like you. You’re a good friend,” she can feel the bitterness of her laugh starting, and he doesn’t deserve that, hasn’t done anything but be a friend, an actual platonic ideal, even with his pretty eyes and nice ass.

“It’s okay,” he says, “I wasn’t sure how things stood. I was just curious. I like you. You’re smart, and you’ve got weird hobbies and skills, and I’m half convinced you’re going to take over my class someday. I thought I’d ask.”

She gives him a genuine smile. “I can honestly say that’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me this week, Wilson. Now buy me a beer, tell me about Izzy’s latest conquest and promise me you’re gonna come see my fancy table at the end of the week. I’ve got plans for it.”

~*~

Bruce gets there on time but hangs in the truck for fifteen minutes, returning David’s text with a call. He’s not stalling, and if he draws out the conversation about David’s chem project long enough that David starts to sound peeved, it’s just that he wants to err on the side of responsive and engaged. 

Besides, Phil gives the same speech at every WrekerWerks salon, “We want to showcase the work of our artisans and our apprentices, and those who find inspiration here. Our featured artists are all here tonight, so please feel free to ask them questions. Everything has a price, of course, but that doesn’t mean it’s for sale. And as always, if you break it, you bought it.”

Peggy had been the one to spill that Phil had invited Nat to put her worktable in the salon, bubbly and effusive at the New Year’s party. Nat had brushed off his pleasure on her behalf, dismissing her own efforts, but he could tell she was pleased. He hadn’t brought it up again, thinking he’d do something special for her tonight. 

Then they’d fought. 

Two weeks and they haven’t spoken, haven’t seen each other at all.

He was up late the other night and saw her truck wasn’t there, and he broke a glass, lobbing it hard into the sink, unable to keep himself from wanting to know where she was. He gave up the right to ask even as a concerned friend, and he doesn’t want to know that she found somewhere else to spend the night, but it’s better than worrying she’d run off the road on her way home. He’d contemplated that worry, since there was nothing concrete he could do with it, and the anger at himself burned out quickly. He fished the shards out of the drain with methodical care, disposed of the glass without a cut, and forced himself back to the table to work until dawn He went to bed without looking out the window again. When he got up, the day was overcast, miserable, but her Jeep was back in her space.

Now his own truck is getting cold and he can’t pretend he’s not stalling. He owes her this. Owes Phil, and all of his other apprentices.

It still feels like he’s crashing the party, even if he has a standing invite. 

Angie greets him with a hug. “You missed the speech, but you also missed the champagne.”

Peggy is more serious with a hand on his arm, and he feels an unexpected wave of gratitude that these two have opened their lives to him, offered support and love, and a swift kick in the ass when he’s needed it over the years. They’d pulled him into this community, and have pulled Nat as well, and he thinks maybe there’s more for him to learn about love and support, being a good neighbor.

They flank him in a way that feels protective, like they’re keeping him in their orbit for a bit, radiating the love and lust and mutual respect for each other that always seems a given between them despite deep disagreements in the past. He takes hold of Peggy’s hand on his arm, and leans to kiss Angie’s cheek.

“You look less fractured,” Peggy says. “Did you finish the applications?”

He nods. “Just the first round, there’s still more to come. But I did submit for the council grant, although it still feels weird to apply for that one.”

Peggy sips champagne. “It’s to support a member of the community. You’re a valued member, Bruce. You just don’t get to vote on your own grant.”

Angie squeezes his arm. “So maybe this spring, Jakarta, right?”

“Maybe,” he says, and feels a little sick with the possibility. “More likely, April in New England, living in a shitty dorm and talking kinetic movement with a superior artist.”

“Don’t,” Angie says, and Peggy interrupts.

“Go say hello to Phil,” she says, “He’s really proud of this crop.”

Phil catches up with Bruce at the cash bar, drawing him away after he pulls out a stashed bottle of champagne and leads him through the pieces, showing off the highlights of this past season’s apprentices. Bruce runs his hand over the polished top of a record cabinet, new speakers in old panels with polished doors and a radio set. It’s a beautiful piece, and he’s recognizing a signature style.

“The original was plain cherry, and Daisy shaped the black walnut accents and panels by hand from a piece of trunk David helped her haul to the workshop.” Phil sips his wine. “Probably too big to sell in town, but I’d be surprised if it hangs around past Memorial Day.”

Bruce wishes he could give it a home.

Daisy waves as she comes by with a few people, popping the hood and pointing out the wiring to make several generations of equipment come together.

Bruce can see Nat’s influence there, the mark she’s choosing to make.

He scans the crowd for blonde hair, but Natasha’s short, and he doesn’t want to be obvious. He already feels like a dick for the whole damned thing, just being here and looking for her like he’s earned the right. Like he hasn’t sacrificed it through a combination of self-defeat and blind rage. He’s still half convinced their romantic involvement could only mean disaster, but he’s finding that his doubts look a lot more like excuses these days, like giving in to fear, and at the very least, he just...wants to see her. He’s not sure he can change anything, but he misses her. Fiercely.

As if reading Bruce’s mind, Phil asks, “You wanna see the worktable?” His pride is infectious. “Natasha’s made something really lovely, made it her own.” 

Bruce is embarrassed to feel that pride swell in himself - that she’s done something outside of her wheelhouse and done it so well, that someone whose opinion he cares about is proud of her. There’d been late nights of talking through her design in September, what she’d wanted the table to do, stripping the concept down to basics, envisioning it as both art and craft, beautiful and functional. Nights he’d listened in languid awe as she shaped her thoughts with her hands, tracing her designs over his skin.

Bruce traces the edge of the worktable, the same beeswax polish as Daisy’s piece, possibly from the same tin. He can see the complexity of Nat’s thought process, and her developing visual aesthetic; brushed chrome, glass and wood, found, reclaimed, a mash of classic and space-aged.

The slim drawer that opens for delicate tools and circuitry is lined with velvet and rubber to protect from scratches and static, the ports are plentiful and hidden along both sides, the panel you can push in, slide and tilt to support paper or a tablet, changeable surface options, and the potential inherent to break the whole thing down to upgrade components or make it a lap-sized station. Portable purpose. There’s a sleek, practical beauty to it, and he brushes his fingers over the ridge at the side closest to him, the slot to catch a pencil or stylus, or a runaway resistor.

“It turned out well, I think.” Her low voice is threaded with deliberate, practiced amusement. He thinks it’s a front, but he can’t see her face. He takes a deep breath.

“Beautiful,” he says, turning to look at her, “Exactly as envisioned.”

Her hair is up, long neck exposed, mouth lush and lovely. He swallows.

“Not exactly,” she says, that wry amusement still threading her tone. “I may have been...distracted.”

He winces.

“Anyone else feel that breeze?” Phil lays a parting hand on Natasha's shoulder as he looks toward the back of the room. “I think I'll go make sure Parker hasn't convened a smoke circle in the back parking lot. Excuse me.”

She’s wearing black - a slinky sweater and very tall ankle boots, something glinting delicately at her wrist and her throat. She’s polished and put together and a little remote, heart-stoppingly gorgeous. The glass of champagne in her hand is half-full, and when she takes a sip it reads like an act but he still can’t stop himself from watching her mouth, the column of her throat as she swallows.

“Sometimes,” he says thickly, “distraction can be good.”

“That’s not what I heard,” she shakes her head, “seems like it’s bad news all around.”

“Didn’t hurt your piece,” he says, and puts his fingers against the frosted glass of the worktable, looking for balance.

“Who knows,” she says softly, “what it could have been if my whole focus had been engaged.”

He doesn’t want to talk in code anymore. He wants to take her hand, and haul her outside, press her up against the studio garage, muss her up, get that heartbreak smile instead of this perfect layer of chilly pretense giving him a calm blink.

He knows he gave up the right to want those things months ago; gave up the ability to even hold her hand two weeks past with the swing of a hammer in place of words he couldn’t summon. 

She’s looking at him like she’s still waiting for him to figure something out, but he doesn’t know where to start, her name in his mouth when Sam walks up and bumps her with his hip.

Her smile goes from playacting to real, opening up her face, and it takes everything Bruce has not to turn from her, ashamed. Penitent. Jealous, because the rest wasn’t ugly enough. Sam clasps Bruce’s upper arm, grips his hand, and Bruce plasters his smile back on and stays put, muttering a greeting as they shake.

Sam tilts his head towards Natasha. “Man, I can totally see that being perfect for non-traditional students,” he says to her. “Maybe a little less 2001 for the classroom, but…”

“Yeah,” she says, “I just need to figure out how to simplify it, create a more large scale production version.”

“You’ll figure it out,” Bruce says softly, not really wanting to be in this conversation, already stepping back to let Sam stand closer to the piece. ”It really is something to be proud of.”


	15. Breaking Quarantine

Nat left her pompom hat at home for the Salon, but has bowed to the cold January air by topping her sleek black outfit with a silver fake fur wrap that looks like it was pilfered from a sleigh.

The bathtub couch is stationed outside the workshop, and Bruce is sitting in it, focused on the teenagers as they fool around in front of the fire pit, hiding a joint or a cigarette as if the world depended on keeping their vices under wraps. They’re full of this exaggerated goodwill, knocking against each other with an enthusiasm she admires, the ease of their physicality, the pettiness of their sins. Angie’s right, the charm is that they really like what they like. But fuck it, so does she.

She’s been turning over the whole fight for weeks, his resignation, but his anger too, the control he refuses to believe he has, and how much unbridled fear must be driving the whole thing. 

She thinks if he’d just admitted to what he wanted, talked through the way rage had driven him, not just to the brink, but also forward sometimes, the sheer stubborn cussedness of not backing down when he got low, the precariousness of that balance...she’d have taken him in, shown him she still had his back. Instead he’d retreated, disappeared.

She’d wanted Bruce to come tonight, wanted to show him how her project had ended up, even if she’d failed to break their stalemate and explicitly invite him. But when he’d come in to the Salon, glad-handing his friends as if nothing were wrong, sporting the jeans and coat they’d bought together, that confident ease he could wear like armor, she riled, even as she saw his ragged edges.

Showing up here only seemed to prove that this was ultimately his place, his community forged first. It snapped something inside, filling her with the worst of her own pride and rage until she had to push at him, prove something. Rise above the sting and show that nothing bothered her. 

Act like losing him hadn’t felt like abandonment.

Then she got up close and saw his hands, loving and graceful on this thing she’d made, sweeping along wood she’d cut and sanded and polished, the same way he’d trace her jaw. It rattled her chilly pretense. 

He turns to her, mouth so soft, tenderness and pride, “Beautiful,” he says, and there’s no question he’s talking about the thing she’s made. No question that he’s happy to see her piece came out as she intended, happy for her.

The need to claw at him wavers. Suddenly, she doesn’t want to keep hurting him back. She’s ached for a truce she couldn’t ask for, still can’t, as they hang there.

Sam’s brightness is a welcome bit of ease, his friendship a bolster that lets her turn, make small talk and try to regroup.

“You’ll figure it out,” Bruce murmurs, slipping away with this look on his face, that pride gone brittle, grief and shame in the set of his shoulders.

She can’t let that stand. 

She misses him. She doesn’t know how to start, but she makes her way through the guests and out into the back parking lot.

She spots his truck, then spots him, sitting in the bathtub couch that’s parked off to the side away from the little bonfire ringed with teenagers from the shop. He’s looking at the kids like they live in a world he’s not part of. He looks lonely, which is a surprising thought, with his encyclopedic knowledge of the town’s residents, the bright genuine smiles and warmth he gets from his colleagues and friends. The fragility of those connections strikes her, how easily they can slip away if he doesn’t maintain them, that this withdrawing is also what he means by getting low. She’s not the only thing he’s afraid of failing at in this place, these longer, deeper connections that he also has obligations to.

The hurt is still sore, but there’s part of her that wants to press her mouth against his neck, take him home, put him to bed and crawl in with him, wipe that expression off his face. It occurs to her that her wrap is nearly the same color as the trim on his hood.

She sits down next to him. The bathtub couch is small, and her thigh is flush with his. Despite the cool evening, she can feel his heat soak into her. He doesn’t move away.

“I was an asshole,” he says without preamble. “I just don’t know if I was wrong. I’m not...I don’t even...know. But I’m sorry. That I couldn’t give you what you needed. That I kept letting myself pretend, because it felt so...good. That I destroyed...”

“You were both,” she interrupts, giving in just for the moment, “an asshole, and wrong. But you didn’t destroy anything irreparably.” She finishes her drink, puts her glass on the ground, and takes his hand, turning it over, stroking the palm. She knows what they feel like, sliding over her body to bring her pleasure, and comfort, ease and support, the thin security he has offered. She has watched him build things, and destroy things, himself included. Cook for her, and embroider a sketch with equations, and rub against that place on her neck, her base of her spine, the arch of her foot.

These are unaccountably precious to her; the worn callouses and the smattering of fine hair across the backs, the curve of his thumbnails, the creases of his knuckles. She’s still angry, but maybe she needs to negotiate from a different place.

He laces his fingers through hers, grips tightly.

“You know, everyone keeps asking me what I’m doing, and I kept giving them these flip answers, but I finally had to answer that for myself, and I figured it out.”

He waits, thumb rubbing against her knuckles like he’s been given a temporary reprieve to touch her, and he’s going to make the most of it by not letting go.

“I’m looking at what I want, making choices beyond _Can I do it? Am I good at it? Will anyone get hurt? Is it convenient?_ I’m taking risks that aren’t life or death decisions. It’s liberating, making a life here for myself. And terrifying. And the thing is, I’m the one who gets to make those decisions. No one else.” She meets his eyes finally, mouth tight because he shouldn't be able to undo her with that look, not after everything.

His face is so open, dark eyes raw and hungry, and yet still so resigned, like what he wants most will always hang out of reach. His grip is strong, and she leans in. He raises his free hand, the back of his fingers gentle along her cheekbone, fluttering along her jawline, lighting up her nerves. He cups her cheek, says softly, “I know it's been hard stuff to tackle. I see your courage, your determination.” He swallows. “Makes me proud of you.” His voice softens, “Awed. Astonished. Amazed by you.”

She turns her head and closes her eyes, pressing a kiss into his palm, and he slides that hand warm around her bared neck, cupping her skull.

She’d wanted to engage in the fight, tell him that he’s not as bad as he thinks, that there’s something amazing in him too - and that she wants all that broken, fractured, damaged stuff along with it, that she can take it, that she understands, that she will fight through it if he will. Instead she’s moved, stunned by the unexpected tenderness of his touch, and his pride.

Natasha has been told so many times that she’s beautiful, desirable, fuckable. But from the beginning Bruce has looked at her and instead asked her what she wanted, taken what she had to give, and in return given what he could until he couldn’t anymore. Never once has anyone pushed her away out of a fear of damaging her. She hates the sentiment, but she’s starting to understand.

“We need to talk about things,” he says. “We can’t just pretend. I know I can’t keep pretending.”

“I’m not asking you to,” she says. “I’m not asking for anything.”

He looks down at their gripped hands, but doesn’t let go.

“You really did good,” he says. “Phil’s so delighted, he might explode.”

“You came tonight, and I didn’t think you would.” She looks at him. “Do you think, just for the rest of the evening, that we could do this? Pretend it’s not complicated? I know it’s selfish, but I want to revel, just a little. I made something new--the commercial applications completely beside the point--I just wanted to make it, and I did, and it works, and it’s damned pretty.”

Something flickers in his expression as he returns her look. Want, she thinks, but something else he’s still processing, trying to solve for the unknown. “Yeah,” he says, throaty and full of the need that had made the summer a blurry haze of lust. “Okay.” He brushes his thumb across her lower lip one last time before pulling his hands back, coiling back up. 

She licks her lip, tasting champagne and road salt, and tries to convince herself that she should be content with his friendship.

~*~

The first week of February is bitterly cold, and while the house no longer looks like it’s trudging through a post-holiday walk of shame, the tree remains in the corner of the living room, stripped of the ornaments, but still festooned with strings of stale popcorn. When the house is very quiet, you can hear the tinkle of needles dropping. 

Natasha applies half a pot of coffee to the headache gathered behind her eyes, and bundles in so many layers she feels like a bloated corpse. She chides herself, “Come on, let’s do this,” sounding just as grim as she feels, and slides open the patio door.

The wind off the lake cuts through the house. It feels good on the strip of forehead her hat doesn’t cover, helps the pounding recede.

She defenestrates the Christmas tree, toppling it out onto the deck and unscrewing the bolts for the stand. She dumps the needles off the tree skirt, then squares her shoulders and drags the tree to the side of her yard. She pants, enveloping herself in a cloud of her own steam, then rallies and goes back inside. She’s left the patio door open, and when she gets inside she strips her layers off right in the living room and pants some more, looking down at the tree skirt like she’s actually thinking, but mainly she’s just determining what she needs to do to keep going through her standard Tuesday, which is WrekerWerks and light errands in town. Shower since she’s already sweaty, layers in case she’s hot or cold, maybe some aspirin since the coffee’s not taking care of this headache.

Phil takes one look at her when she’s signing in, hair still wet from the shower and the ends of her curls frozen from the short walk between car and shop. “No. Not happening.”

“What?”

“Nuh-uh, you’re signing right back out. Keep the pen while you’re at it, I don’t feel like sterilizing it. You’re in quarantine, Nat.”

Natasha is truly puzzled. “I’m fine, Phil. I don’t take sick days--”

“I don’t care about your work ethic or stoicism or what you have to prove.” Phil steps close, hands braced on his trim leather belt and voice even softer than usual, “I can see you have a fever from here, and I will bounce your ass into the parking lot myself before you spread the plague around my shop.”

“You’re seriously kicking me out for being a little under the weather?”

“I haven’t had the flu since 1986. You are not breaking my streak.”

“I’ve never had the flu.”

“That’s no longer true.” He points to the door.

“It’s just a headache.” Nat sighs and leans against the breaker bar for the door, exiting slowly and under protest. The light outside is achingly bright, and the pain has now pooled at the base of her skull as well. “I don’t have the flu.” 

Phil’s smile is cheerful as he waves goodbye, “Enjoy your denial while you can.”

~*~

Bruce appraises the lump of blankets and misery on the couch. There’s a pile of tissues spilling out of a mug on the side table, and the television is on, but the sound is just barely audible. “So Phil sent me a text…”

“Phil’s paranoid.” Nat pushes herself to a sitting position, as if a canted pile of blankets topped with a riot of blonde bed hair is an illustration of hale and hearty. “It’s just a little cold.” This assertion is punctuated by the stiffening of someone bracing against a shiver.

“Oh god, you’re one of those. You don’t even own a thermometer, do you?”

Her look is bleary and befuddled, and he sees how glassy her eyes are. “I bought one for meat…”

“You better hope you never register on one of those.” He reaches for her forehead and feels the heat even before his palm makes contact. She’s croupy toddler hot, and the sensation kick starts a groove of behaviour in his brain, an autopilot program that compiles a triaged task list. “Guess who’s taking a nice lukewarm bath?”

“I’m not a child.”

“Of course not. I would never leave a feverish child unattended in the bath.” He ignores the response that starts out as a grumble and turns into coughing, heading down the hall to start the tub. He waits until she shuffles in.

“I showered this morning, you know.”

“Yeah, you look fresh as a daisy.”

“You’re being awfully bossy.”

He shoves his hands deep in his pockets and looks at her.

She seems to shrink a little, shoulders pulled in as she leans back against the counter. “Goddamn it, I’ve got the fucking flu.”

“Sorry.” Bruce wants to pull her into an embrace, but she also steamy and damp and her skin feels wrong. “If you’ve got this, I’m going to get some things, I’ll be back in a hour.”

She nods, staring at the filling tub dejectedly.

“You’re going to want to warm it up. Try not to, okay? Just get out if it gets too cold.”

When Bruce gets back with a box of supplies it’s only been twenty minutes but Nat’s out of the bath and buried on the couch under what looks like every blanket in the house. Her hair looks like wet hay. He rummages and then gestures the thermometer toward her. It disappears into the blankets.

She’s formed a tunnel through them for air, which is aimed at the television. He’s surprised it’s a movie, perhaps comfort viewing is a different genre than background noise programming, but the sound is so low it’s hard to hear the dialogue even after a smudge-faced Sophia Loren slaps Cary Grant.

The thermometer beeps and she hands it off with a croaked, “Do you remember the sound televisions used to make? That high pitched whine of the picture tube?”

“Yeah, actually.”

“It was a terrible sound. Why would I miss it?”

“Familiarity? What are you watching?”

“ _Houseboat_.” She pauses to cough wetly, and then a wad of tissue ejects from her blanket cocoon. She must have pulled the box in with her. “I’ve been thinking about the sounds that Ethelred made. How to use the parts themselves to make naturalistic sounds as the mechanism moves.”

It’s an intriguing idea, and if she didn’t sound like death warmed over, he’d be interested in talking about it further. “Why don’t we circle back to that once you’re no longer plague-ridden?”

Her attempt at a roar turns into a groan.

He loads the pressure cooker with the chicken parts and stock bits he dug out of his freezer, tossing in a generous handful of her black peppercorns to cover any freezer burn funk. He unloads the whiskey and the ginger bitters Angie gave him last year. It’s when he goes to her fridge to look for a lemon that he sees the picture.

Her niece and nephew have contributions up on the fridge, tacked with a series of magnetized bottle caps she got from Wanda in town, drawings of the family and inscrutable scenes. And in the midst of them, one of David’s cartoons.

The sheet is curled, and shares a magnet with the syllabus for the next course she’s taking from Fury, clearly having been on her fridge for a while. How did he not notice this before?

It’s a wolverine, peering out like a meerkat from the gnawed-on rib cage of a dragon. It has a tuft of blonde hair atop its head, big sharp teeth and green anime eyes, blood on its paws, and it asks in a large font across the top, _“Will you be my Valentine?”_

It adds, in much smaller letters at the bottom, _“oops...i 8 ur <3”_

Nat restarts the movie with the sound on when he gets back, drops her head on his thigh, and promptly falls asleep as the medicine kicks in. There’s a patch of wetness seeping through his jeans under her cheek, the drool of the damned, but it only gives him a spasm of stupid fondness.

“Oops,” Bruce murmurs as he drags sweaty locks off her forehead and watches her eyelashes twitch in REM, “U 8 my less-than-three.”

He crashes on her couch that night, not that he has any defensible reason other than an urge to keep watch, to be close. This is how he finds out that the dawn simulator Stark had given her for Christmas is not only wired throughout the house, it’s sophisticated enough to rouse Bruce in the living room but keep Nat’s bedroom dark until she wakes on her own.

She’s a humid limpid mess for days, and Bruce brings over his laptop and works in the spaces between cooking and dosing. The punctuated breaks actually help him finish a few second round applications; stopping to do something concrete like debone a chicken or hit the bathroom with bleach is strangely grounding. He’s not concerned about contagion, unlike Phil, who texts from his car that’s he’s left some ginger ale and lemons on the doorstep. Angie brings over a mixed stack of magazines---tattoos and futurism, popular science and archaeology, old copies of Mad and Mental Floss and National Geographic--which occupies Nat’s antsy brain enough to keep her down and resting.

He comes around to the burgeoning light on day three to find her watching him from the new green Adirondack chair. He’s seen all of her stolen hotel bathrobes by now, this one the fluffiest with a hood. She’s sipping some of the hot lemony ginger ale Phil had left a recipe for, which he finds vile, but seems to soothe her throat.

“It’s supposed to be yours, you know.” She indicates the lighting as he sits up and starts roughly folding the blanket. “Stark wouldn’t leave until I agreed to try putting it in your house.”

“But you haven’t.”

She shrugs. “Maybe I’m keeping it.”

He sighs, and capitulates, “Light does help. It’s as annoying as shit, and...it’s still not that simple. But this would be something I don’t have to think about.”

“I find it annoying as shit when Tony Stark is right.”

“We did share a dorm room. He does have some observation skills.”

“Pshhh.” Nat waves this off as she clears out her lungs with a methodical cough, whole face red by the time she finishes.

“I think the cold weather doesn’t help. Winter is when the accident happened, you know, so maybe that’s why it feels dreadful and dangerous.”

“Accident?”

Bruce leans across to lay a hand on her forehead, prompting, “My parents? When I was eight?”

“I haven’t looked you up, you know.”

“That’s...surprising.” Bruce had assumed that she’d investigated him.

“Seemed important...people have more dimensions than just their data.”

“So you don’t really know anything I haven’t told you?” 

“Ellie rats you out a fair amount, but yeah.”

Ellie had found the newspaper articles a few years ago, archived online, and Bruce still has the link in email. He brings it up on Nat’s tablet, heading into the kitchen to make coffee while she reads, while she watches the fuzzy clip of a local news reporter intoning gravely from the hospital lobby, tie as wide as a tucked napkin as he describes the sole survivor as a boy pulled from the water moments before the car slid completely under the ice. Doctors list him in critical condition, with a history of previous injuries. Relatives of the boy have declined comment.

She comes into the kitchen, video paused on her tablet. “This was you.”

“Yeah. Got lucky, hit the water face first and my heart slowed down enough that I didn’t fully drown before I was pulled from the water. A couple had seen the car plow through the guard rail, the man ran to find a phone, the woman just dove in, pulled me out, gave me first aid. She told one of the cops her name was Claire; never found out anything more about her.”

He shakes his head, trying for reassurance, “I don’t remember any of this, not really. I mean, I know how it went down, because there was a pattern to it, but that’s not a memory or anything. I lost a few days around the accident, there’s a gap between the last school day and then I remember my cousin Jen handing me a stuffed animal in the hospital. It was a penguin with a red bow tie.”

She lets herself mirror his smile, and lets the subject shift.

Nat’s well enough the next day to put on something like regular clothes and sit at her kitchen table to finish off the last of the soup for lunch, as he cleans out the pressure cooker and packs up the supplies he’d brought from home.

“You said there was a pattern, before the accident.”

Bruce hangs the dish towel carefully. He’s not surprised she’s circled back. He thinks about their game of truth or dare, and her story about the cake she’d passed off as childhood hijinks. “Yes.”

“What do you think happened?”

“I know. For a long time, because of the settlement, I pretended I didn’t know for sure...but I know. I’ve walked some in both their shoes; the rages, the desperate need to buffer until the system collapses…”

He takes her empty bowl and washes it as he continues, quiet and calm though a part of him is thrumming with a dread just barely held in check. If anyone could understand and not overreact, not pity him, it would be Nat. “He’d floor it. Threaten to hit a bridge pylon. Temper tantrum, playing chicken with her to force her hand. Didn’t even matter what about, he always had the nuclear option and he’d remind her, and she’d cave. Except one time...she didn’t.”

She’s listening, hands wrapped around her mug, taking it in with those eyes that catch so much.

“It was starting to get cold out, getting icy, and he was gunning it, weaving through lanes while she kept trying to reason with him and then she just...stopped. Looked at him like she’d never seen him before. He didn’t like that, so he aimed at a bridge footing for an overpass, but she reached over and grabbed the wheel - at the last minute when he usually swerved away - she yanked it hard.” Bruce huffs, dismal smile on his lips as he remembers his dad shocked for the first time in his life. 

Natasha doesn’t share his smile, but she doesn’t seem out of her depth, either. Sometimes what you can do is bear empathetic witness. He’s done that for Stark. For her. So this is what it looks like from the other side.

“He stood on the brakes and we did a three-sixty, left a scrape of paint on the pylon. I remember the sky blue color on the concrete, the long scratch on my door, bright steel. It was rough, when we got home, and she was really accommodating for a while. You could almost mistake it for peaceful, but it was cold war after that. I suspect all bluffs were called the night we ended up in the water.”

She pours him a cup of coffee and pushes him into the kitchen chair still warm from her. She gets her toolbox and starts disassembling the components for the dawn simulator.

“I haven’t made up my mind about that, you know.”

“Tell me another one, Banner.”

“Keep this up, I just might.”

“You don’t scare me.”

Bruce wonders how that’s possible, and how twisted he must be to feel a spike of lust at that. Is it the look that seems to x-ray him and just give him a slow blink? Is it the fucking toolbox? Is it the first stirrings of spring?

She saunters over and sets a light unit in front of him like a challenge, then heads into the living room to dismantle the next piece.


	16. Thaw

The driving wind becomes pelting sleet before Nat can get from her side door to her truck, large grains of ice pelting her skin, and a few even landing deep in her windward ear. She calls it a day and heads back inside, sending her regrets into town.

It’s probably the last really good snow day before the thaw hits, and Natasha has decided to spend it like she has a few others, wallowing in the comforts of her new home. Self-indulgence, self-care, some self-love; the flu had really drained a lot out of her, and it had taken a while for her libido to recover, but it’s not like there was any other channel for it right now.

~*~

Thundersnow is a very curious phenomenon wherein a shit ton of snow falls very quickly, the wind drives the snow like sandblasting, and there is actual lightning and thunder.

Bruce is well aware of the impersonal nature of the universe; it does not give two shits about humanity, much less Bruce. This doesn’t stop him from feeling like this storm is winter getting in one last kick to the balls.

~*~

The slushy snow falls like torrential rain all morning, well over a foot already and still rolling in, the lake churning up into the atmosphere just long enough to mostly freeze before falling back down, and everything is that strange color of sunlight half obscured and half refracted. Nat lights some candles as a compromise, boosting the odd snow-colored illumination without overwhelming it with electric light. The book she brought into the tub was not holding her attention, so she’s skipped ahead to working up an appetite for lunch.

~*~

Bruce waits about ten minutes, because sometimes when the power goes out it’ll reroute at the substation and come back on, and firing up the generator is a pain in the ass. It’s wickedly cold out, so it’s not like the food in the chest freezer is going to thaw anytime soon. But without electricity the heater won’t kick on, so when it looks like a long term outage he mutters to himself and goes to clean out the wood stove.

~*~

Nat does not notice the power go out, because what’s the point of being a woman of leisure if you have to plug your vibrator into a wall? Might as well be powered by D-cells or gasoline. What is this, Soviet Russia?

Anyway, after the warm-up she prefers to drive manual.

~*~

It’s when he goes to bring in a load of wood that Bruce sees Nat’s house is dark, but her truck is home. He’s glad she isn’t on the roads or stuck in town, but her heat won’t be working, either, and that fireplace is worse than a nothing at all; lighting it will only suck the heat she has up out of the flue.

He kicks the snow from his boots at her threshold, and finds her door unlocked.

~*~

Okay, maybe she does hear him come in. He gets what he deserves.

He stops just out in the hall, freezing in the middle of unzipping his coat and saying her name. He’s coated in snow.

She leans back imperiously on the mess of pillows. The only sound is muffled thunder rolling and the wet sound of the nubbly glass toy she’s slowly fucking herself with.

“In or out, Banner. I’m getting cold just looking at you.”

~*~

She’s already a few rounds in, if the luscious glow of her skin is any indication, and that’s not something he’s likely to ever forget.

Her nipples look like strawberries.

“Your power is out.”

“How neighborly of you to come over and let me know.” Her eyes are so dark and she bites her lip, like the sight of him melting on her carpet is working for her.

“Do you...want me to stay?”

She rises slowly on her knees, shifting to the edge of the bed, still rocking on that swirl of bottle green glass she got from the Gilded Lily, with the hypnotic focus of someone offhandedly fellating a sucker, only delightfully obscene.

“I’ve said my piece...I can take care of myself.”

“Keep the home fires burning.”

“Yeah,” She nods and closes her eyes.

At some point he’s lost his coat and come close enough to smell how warm and revved up she is. “Even in a cold house?”

“Even in no house.”

~*~

It’s the little half shrug that slays him, as if to say, yeah, of course. Why not? Why would it be any different from the rest of her life? When has she not been the one to take care of herself?

And that kills him just as much as the sheer nuclear heat of what he’s seeing. How unfair can the world be, that someone so brilliant and present and goddamned lovable is right in front of him convinced that there is no one but herself she can rely on. How can the world be so fucking stupid? How is this vital thing left for _him_ to do, of all unqualified people?

Fuck the world. They’re all a bunch of fucking idiots not to see her, appreciate her, want to take care of her.

Show the goddamned world. Bunch of assholes.

~*~

She’s close but she’s not going to get there, that’s for sure.

It got really hot there for a long moment, and then it got weird, and she closed her eyes because she doesn’t want to see him make his exit, but she keeps herself on the plateau because she’s been building this one for a good long while, and it’ll still be really good if she can keep the groove until he leaves.

She hears the squeak of his boots right next to her bed and opens her eyes with a puzzled frown as his fingers graze lightly up her thighs.

He’s on his knees, looking up at her with this fierce awe like she’s an ecstatic vision and anyone who disagrees is gonna be spitting teeth.

Her breath catches and he swoons in, burying his nose, his hot tongue, fingers tangling with hers around the loop handle of glass. She grabs the headboard in one hand and a fistful of his hair in the other, locking her knees. He’s moaning into her, palming her ass like he really needs to keep her there, and fucking her with her toy and his bristly face and his soft unrelenting mouth. She starts sobbing, coming and coming undone.

She comes around eventually, hand still in his hair as he looks up at her. The ferocity is softened, becoming a tenderness, a question. He is so stupid sometimes.

She pulls and as he rises to his feet, yanking off his shirt, while she runs her hand down his chest, his belly, and opens his jeans. An aftershock rolls through her at the sight of him so hard, even before she wraps her hand around him and slides him across her tongue, the warm scent and satin weight of his cock in her mouth.

It’s been months, it’s felt like years, like something lost, and his breath hisses between his teeth as she pours all of that into her tongue wrapping around his head, her fingernails gently raking his balls as they tighten, as she suckles him over the edge.

His hand in her hair clenches and he pulls back, she bares her throat and lets him finish on her chest, watching him spurt and shudder. She’s still got a possessive grip around him, almost an anchor as he sways on his feet, eyes so dark and his bottom lip bitten red, dragging his shaky fingers through his come on her skin

Yeah. He’s in.

~*~

One of her hands is back in his hair, flexing and tugging, her pupils blown. He realizes he hasn’t kissed her yet, which is insane, so he catches her hands in his and pushes her down onto the bed, stretching her arms above her head and kissing her like his life depends on it.

She’s warm and lax, sticky from both of their efforts, body arching into his with her thigh pressing his hip, the wet heat of her cunt against his belly sending rolling shocks through him. Her skin feels so damned good, the motion of her as he grinds his pelvis against her center, his lips grazing her ear.

“How many times,” he asks, dirty and desperate to know, “have you made yourself come today?”

She shudders against him, this low happy noise of need in her throat, and says, “If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you,” and he bites her lip, thrusts against her, even as the scrape of her comforter against his dick makes him squirm, catch his breath.

She shows him no mercy at the pause, other thigh coming up to squeeze him, roll them over. She straddles him and reaches for her phone on the bedside table. “Hold on.”

“Nat--?”

She scratches his belly as she scrolls through her phone with shaking hands, soothing. “You said the power was out.”

“It’s the wind; sometimes it’s a few minutes, never more than a few hours, but that’s long enough for the house to get cold with the weather like this.” He still has his boots on, hanging off the side of the bed, and the chill is starting to bite into the smell of sex in the room. He wants to wrap a blanket around her, wrap himself around her, fuck her senseless, take her home and feed her. Her nipples are rock hard, and there’s a line of come rounding the curve of her belly.

“I have to report to my team.” She tosses the phone into the chair where her bathrobe lies discarded, and brings her full attention back to him. “Put on my gear. Get my flashlights. Direct traffic downtown where the stoplights are out.”

“What, now?”

“Code green, gotta fly.” She climbs off him reluctantly, but gains speed, gathering jeans and multiple layers as she heads to the bathroom.

Bruce tucks himself away when she comes out fully dressed not a minute later, hair in a ponytail, fastening her heaviest leather belt.

She steps over the coat he left in her doorway. He follows, and slaps together a peanut butter sandwich while she shoves two layers of thick socks into her boots, handing it to her with her helmet and go bag. “I”ll put this place in order. Come to my house when you’re done, it’ll be warm there. I’ll have dinner.”

Nat gives him a long strange look, says, “I’m sorry I pushed you,” and darts out the door before he can make any reply.

~*~

Peggy’s lessons keep her in good stead, but there’s a layer of ice under the snow from the quick, drastic temperature drop, and she’s thankful for the need to focus on the roads, no distractions allowed.

Her skin is still vaguely tacky, she’d only been able to do a quick clean up and she’s pretty sure any rehash of the last half hour is going to rob it of the hazy, dirty, awe-inspiring satisfaction she’d actually felt in the moment. She doesn’t want to second guess the feel of him, the taste, or warmth or that look on his face that had made her dizzy. She wants to hold it close, as dear as that damned sandwich and the instructions to come home to him, and the clarity of his own look - like he’s figured out an equation that’s baffled him, a literal light bulb going off, a decision writ large.

There’s a surprising amount of traffic downtown. She parks a few blocks away to stay out of the flow, and meets Kate in the main intersection to confirm her assignment.

Too many people are trying to get home, lacking her luxury of soft obligations she could easily ditch. They’d already been there, the diner half full, people manning their shops and picking up their kids from school.

It’s a small town, but still full of people unprepared for so much volume of snow, or too full of hubris to adequately account for the layers of ice under the soft, wet slop. There’s an accident already, and Nat wades into the street to redirect folks around it through the side streets.

It’s a few hours of traffic management as the plows and salt trucks make several passes, before the lights come back on, but there’s still plenty of first aid and roadside assistance for the minor fender-benders, people high centered or fighting frigid batteries.

Nat’s able to haul a few people out of snowdrifts, take a few home whose partners or family can’t get out of their driveways, and run water and medicine out for a handful with limited mobility. Eventually the power’s back on, the roads have stabilized to a manageably shitty condition, and most everyone is safe and where they need to be for the night. The snow even slows down, becoming improbably fluffy puffs drifting down like cottonwood.

Fury gathers them at the community center where they’ve held their CERT classes, but she doesn’t sit down as they debrief and he signs them out of their posts. She’s so wrung out that she doesn’t trust her ability to get back up again to go home; she’s going to keep moving until she park her carcass in front of some food, hopefully within a few feet of a pillow.

She stops by her house, one bulb of her stand lamp lit and her furnace running to catch up with the chill. She considers just peeling out of her wet clothes and crawling into bed right there, but she’s never been the type to avoid when she can see a path to barrel through. Exhausted or not, she’s got a conversation to finish.

~*~

The power comes back on around five, which makes the whole dinner thing a lot easier to pull off because Bruce can shift the roast from the edge of the fireplace into the regular oven. He fusses in both of their houses, circling back to check the outage map on his tablet, cleaning things he hasn’t really looked at for months, like his tub. Feathering the nest, as Tony would put it. He keeps wondering which part she was sorry about.

~*~

“You brought extra food.”

“I stopped by the house.” Nat shrugs, pulling the ingredients for cowboy chili out of her go bag. It’s after ten, and she’s soaking wet from the waist on down, but she did come to his house even though she’s moving like she’s sleepwalking. “Thanks for unplugging all my stuff.”

“Sure.” Bruce waves that away, and lets her futz while he sets a plate of roast in the microwave. Unlike her, he thought to grab her a set of pyjamas and a robe earlier, which are waiting on his bathroom counter.

She’s still pulling out cans and boxes of pasta and it’s looking less like a contribution toward dinner and more like something he needs to put a stop to.

“Nat, put your pantry back in the bag.”

“I know things are tight, I don’t want to impose--”

“I can feed you--”

“I want to help--”

“I’m not a charity case, Natasha. I’m not starving in a garret.”

“When did I say you were?” She shoves the bag, knocking it against the pile of groceries and her LED lantern. Her eyes are red, weariness and likely some of the road salt she’s spattered with, crusted like a pretzel. “I just...you’ve been taking care of me a lot, lately; you dish it out, but you can’t take it.”

“You can’t be my patron.”

“Do I look like I want a pet artist, Bruce?” She shakes her head, incredulous. “For fuck’s sake, if anything, _I’m_ my pet artist in this situation.”

The microwave beeps. She starts tugging off her wet jeans as she heads to the laundry niche, turning them inside out to free herself and dropping them on the tile with a heavy smack. She strips off her panties as well and reaches into the dryer, bare-assed, skin mottled from the cold as she just goes off on a weary peevish rant. “If I wanted to be someone’s _patron_ , it’s a small town but I’m still spoilt for choice.”

She shoves her legs into a pair of his sweatpants. “Even Stark knows you invest in art, not in artists. It’s not renaissance Florence, I don’t need aggrandizement or propaganda or to appease the fucking church. Patron. You don’t really mean patron.” She yanks open his silverware drawer and pulls out a fork, then yanks open the microwave and pulls out the plate.

“If I wanted to be someone’s sugar mama there are much fucking easier options out there. You are not convenient, for all that you’re right next door.” She stops as she passes him on the way to his living room, poking him in the chest with his own fork. “But I love _you_ , you stubborn asshole.”

She pads off to flop into her preferred corner of his couch, plate resting in her lap untouched when he joins her. She’s looking down at the food, fork in hand, and her voice has gone thready. “You’re fucked up, and broken, and brilliant, and so good despite it all, and…”

He disarms her of the fork and sets the plate on his coffee table. She lets him, and finally looks at him.

“...and you can see me, Bruce,” she swallows, “the real me, when you look past your own shit, and...you seem to like me anyway. Yes, like that--when you look at me like that. I don’t care if we’re Mister Rogers neighbors, if this can’t be a thing, then it can’t. I’m sorry I pushed you earlier, I...I just need you to be okay, and I need you to look at me like _that_ , even just sometimes. It’s like coming up for air.”

It’s almost funny, he thinks, because his lungs feel like he’s drowning, tight, airless, the pressure so intense that he doesn’t realize he’s not actually breathing until she looks back down at her lap. Things have gone fuzzy around the edges for a few seconds as he takes in her words, as he finds the capacity in himself to respond. His feelings aren’t news to him, but there’s something about voicing them aloud, taking them beyond silent action, the words making it real. Making him answerable.

“I love you, too,” he says, voice cracking a little,”I have...I do…” and it feels inadequate in the face of what she’s just admitted. He needs to show her what he means, how deeply he takes her words, her confession. He reaches for her hand, pulls it to his cheek, and she makes a sound, an “oh” of understanding, scooting forward on the couch so that she’s got a leg over his lap, foreheads pressed together, meeting him in the middle. She’s never failed to meet him halfway, and he sighs against her, breathing his words into her skin.

“God, Natasha, I love you, and I didn’t even know that was something I could do again, and it has terrified the ever living fuck out of me.”

She cradles his face, head shaking just a little, and then kisses him like she can’t help herself, like further words are pointless. Her lips are chapped from the cold, and he can’t remember anything feeling better. It’s not a gentle, delicate thing, but a message. An answer. Yes. And I’m here. And I understand. I want you. This. He sinks into her, hands against her back, cupping her shoulder, kissing the salt from her lips. A confirmation. Confession. Love.

He’s breathless, from want, and nerves, and most of all from love. She steals his capacity for doubt. 

Her vulnerability. Her compassion. Her sheer bravery in the face of all of the mistakes she’s made and tried to make right, the mistakes he’s made with her, the poor examples the world has given her of love and care. But they both have good examples too, offering them both something to strive for.

That first time, kneeling between her thighs in the early morning, their kisses had been deep and drugging and needy, both of them concentrated on the moment, keeping both past and and future at bay. But now she’s his future in his arms, as he is hers, promises written in the sweep of her tongue along his, the click of teeth, the skating fingers. He pulls back a little because he needs to keep talking before he loses the thread completely. 

“Sometimes, I need the push,” he murmurs, carding through her hair, tangling the edges between his fingertips, tracing her jaw, her throat, unable to stop touching her as he unwinds these feelings, figures out how to bind them, the words nearly a kiss themselves. “Sometimes I’m running away because I’m being a scared asshole, not because I’m actually taking care of myself. Or anyone else.”

She nuzzles against him, teeth sharp against his earlobe, forehead fitting into his neck, like she can’t just sit still in this, needs to be closer, transfer her scent. She bites into the flesh of his shoulder. Marks him. Yes. Hers.

“I’m sorry for ever making you think...for…,” he swallows hard, tries to figure out how to say it. “It’s how I always see you. Amazing, brilliant, stubborn. Difficult. Incredible.”

She shakes her head, kisses him again, and they get lost in it for a minute, twined together like kittens, but he can feel the thready tremors of exhaustion running through her. Bruce shifts them slightly to stroke her back, rub his cheek against her skull. 

“I want the chance to prove it. Because you deserve so much, and if I’m something you want, I will try to be worth it. I don’t think I could bear to disappoint you again. I will do my goddamned level best to be okay. I will undoubtedly fuck it up, and be terrible to be around, and sometimes you’re going to be so sick of my shit. But I am going to try..”

He feels the shape of her smile against his neck, moisture, and he can feel his own eyes, red and raw, and some of the salt he tastes on his lips is his own. 

“It’s a start,” she says.

~*~

Nat finally eats dinner, because her hands are shaking and it’s not with emotion, tremors from adrenaline and low blood sugar and the headache seeping in while he makes them tea with a slug of bourbon and sets the house to rights, shuts it down. She stands under the hot water in his shower for so long that he eventually comes to get her, holding out a towel for her like catching her in a safety net.

He lets the fire go well into the night because it makes more sense than jacking up the heat, and the smoky scent of burnt wood and cooling house is a comfort. Familiar. He’s already in bed when she flicks off the overhead light and crawls in on the other side. His sheets are cool and clean, and her limbs leaden so every action takes twice as long as it should. She burrows into his neck, thigh curled over his hip, his arm around her, hand pressed to the smooth skin of her back under her pajama top.

There is a deliberate delicacy to this, the memory of the last time they’d shared a bed hanging between them, but there aren’t any illusions left, no playing pretend. This is a homecoming. She can feel it as solid and stable and real as the curve of his rib under her palm, the scent of his skin, the scrape of his stubble, his own tight grip on her.

She doesn’t remember falling asleep.

~*~

Bruce can tell it’s early by from the dawn simulator. The room is cold, outside the covers but there’s silky skin under his palms and her hand is shoved down his pants, curled around his hip, wrist against his cock. He’s hard, not sure whether to be embarrassed or pleased, but it’s the first time in months that waking up hasn’t felt like swimming through sludge, and his body is tingling with sensation.

Natasha is sleeping on her belly, half on top of him, whether from the crisp chill of the air or from last night’s confession, the giddy pleasure of sleeping together, all liberties allowed, he doesn’t know. Doesn’t care.

His body is way ahead of his brain on this one though, and he’s not sure whether to shift further towards her and wake her up, or disentangle her, let her sleep. She’s snoring just a little, so he carefully removes her hand, and turns onto his side to face her. His throat is tight, but it isn’t fear or dread. He listens to her breath, lets that lull him back to sleep.

He wakes up an hour later to the smell of bacon and an empty bed. It’s a poor trade-off so he gets up.

She’s standing in his kitchen in his clothes and her robe, circles under her eyes, but at ease, beautiful even with her skin stretched a little thin from yesterday’s efforts. There’s coffee brewing and she’s frying bacon. Gloriously domestic. It stops him in his tracks.

There’s just no precedent, not like this, no hiding behind managed expectations, no playacting. She’s just standing there, and she’s his.

He’s been battling this fierce possessiveness since the summer, and he doesn’t have to fight it anymore. He can let it go, let the emotion evolve into something warm and giving, lose the ugly tinge of jealousy and thwarted desire. 

He gets to want her. No self-loathing. No resentment. More importantly, he gets to belong to her. It staggers him, leaves him weak-kneed. It’s going to take getting used to it, but he’s eager to put in the work.

“What?” she catches his gaze, reaching for the coffee pot.

Bruce shakes his head, and steps forward, cups her skull and kisses her, pressing her back against the counter. She laughs, and kisses him back. Her skin is cool, but her mouth is so warm, the kiss lush and luxurious, coffee-tinged, and her hands twine in his hair as he wraps arms around her waist, nuzzling at her neck.

“Morning,” he says, and it feels so decadent. So full of hope that he doesn’t even know what to do with himself.

She snorts, clutching at as hair and shaking his head back and forth a little, leaning in to nip at his mouth.

“You’re pretty happy this morning,” she says. “Not what I expected.”

Fair enough.

He jerks his chin at the stove. “That what this is for?”

She shrugs. “I wanted to do something,” she says. “To be nice. Maybe. Give you a reason to get up.”

He wants to say that he has a reason, but it’s gonna sound so sappy, and he also doesn’t want to create a false set of expectations. Sure, this morning he feels happy and horny and hopeful. That doesn’t mean tomorrow won’t be difficult, but she’s looking at him like she gets that. He trusts that she’s prepared, so he just says, “Thank you.”

“I don’t want to take advantage,” she murmurs, a tease, but serious too, and he’s not the only one a little gun-shy, the last twenty-four hours such a whipsaw of lust, and worry, and love, and gratitude. 

“Please,” he says in her ear, drawing light circles on her back. “The advantage is yours. Feel free to take it.”

She does. She fists her hand in his t-shirt, tugging him towards her, canting up her hips and he palms her ass, grinds against her, suddenly desperate.

She licks into this mouth and he moans, teeth against her lower lip because he wants...everything. Her nails scratch down his side and he hikes her up on to the counter so she can wrap her legs around his hips, rocking against him. She’s damp and hot through the fabric, flush to his belly.

He pulls back to catch his breath. “Breakfast?” 

“Fuck breakfast,” she says, reaching to flick the burner off.

“No, no.” He tries keeps a straight face even as he’s rolling his hips into hers. “You went to all this trouble.”

“Fuck you, Banner,” she says, a low throaty laugh that burbles through them both. “Or rather, fuck me.” 

He’s so hard his cock is brushing against the silverware drawer, and she reaches between them, takes him in hand, takes him to task. “Please,” she says, like she needs to ask.

“Hang on.” 

She clutches his shoulders as he hauls her back off the counter. She’s strong, and maybe he can bear her weight, but as they pass into the living room she orders, “Couch,” reading his mind and laughing in a way that’s making him stupid. “Now.” He obliges happily.

She rucks his shirt up over the back of his head as he strips off her pants, then his own as she peels off her top, and they are skin to skin, her arms opening to him, cradling him between her thighs as he kisses her neck. Her nails dig into his ass to press him tightly against her.

He’s desperate, and needy, but he also wants to tease her, make her crazy with want, stretch it out, make it perfect. He wants to tilt up her hips and slowly slide inside her, decadent and delicious, take his time. He wants to show her how he feels, how much he has to make up for, how much he needs her.

There’s a tension tight in his chest that’s crawling into his throat, suddenly choking him, all that he wants to convey, prove to her and to himself about this moment, and now he is losing the thread, the control. It’s too much, and he tries to shift the focus on her, sliding a hand down to cup her and tease her, she’s so hot and slick, but his arms are trembling and he’s breathing too fast, drifting into something unknown and treacherous, the world contracting…

“Bruce. _Bruce!_ ” She’s sharp, but not unkind. “Hey, look at me.”

Nat pulls her thighs up so her calves frame his ribs, locking him against her chest as she breathes deep and slow.

“Bruce, just look at me.” 

She holds his head still so she can see his eyes and says, “Take a deep breath. We’ve got all day. We’ve got all the time in the world. Just breathe.” 

He tries to expand his chest slowly, fights the screaming urge to suck in air as fast as he can, and after a moment his vision opens back up. She pulls him down, so that his weight is on her and the cradle of her body is a comfort now.

This is so not how he wanted this to go.

“Breakfast,” she decides, stroking down his back, and when she feels him even out, she gently pushes him off her and helps find his pants.

~*~

She decompresses and tells him all that happened the night before, as they get dressed and he makes eggs to go with the bacon, and they eat at the table amid messy stacks of applications and drawings.

“I can do this,” he finally takes her hand, “I just…”

“I know,” she says, “I’m not worried.”

He quirks his mouth, but he has to take her at her word. He cleans up the dishes, builds a fire to take the chill from the air because she likes to be warm, and he works very, very hard not to feel like a failure. There’s still plenty of pot roast for later, and he’s going to try to make the most of being snowed in.

Bruce grabs his tablet instead of the grant applications because there’s really only so much frustration a man can take on the day his life is supposed to change.

Nat digs out of her backpack a small cloth bag that says _Crochety_ in loopy stitch, and settles into the couch with him, phone in one hand, yarn in the other. She tucks her feet under his ass, and checks in with the CERT team, determines they don’t need her - she’s still not Search and Rescue qualified - and says, “I’m planning on spending the day in pyjamas since yesterday’s decadence was interrupted.”

He’s reading a journal article about kinesthetic theory, one of his own papers queued up behind it. He wraps his hand around her ankle and asks, “That your routine, then, on snow days?”

“Mmm,” she says. “I told you early on I was going to spend whole days in that bathtub.”

He imagines her, cream and pink, steam rising from the air, ankle idly resting on the side of the tub. Shifts a little on the couch, slides his bare toes along her hip.

“Are socks for the weak?” she asks. His feet are cold, even with the fire.

“Mm,” he’s noncommittal, a lazy grin stretching his mouth as he prompts, “And out of the tub?”

She’s crocheting what might be a scarf, might be an afghan, might be neither, and looks up at him from under her lashes. “Out of the tub, I nap, eat lunch, and I fuck myself silly. In the tub too, sometimes, although I prefer the real estate of my bed.”

He puts the tablet aside. “Maybe you should demonstrate,” he says, and it resonates in his chest, the vision of her yesterday, naked and wanton and so beautiful that it stripped him of everything he’d been using to hold himself in check, demonstrating how foolish those efforts had been.

“Yesterday was a pretty good sample,” she says, “And you did get up close and personal.”

“I’m a scientist,” he sits up enough to run his hand up the outside of her thigh, spreading his fingers out, wrapping them around the join of her hip. “I need to observe more data to really draw a conclusion.”

“Well,” she says, tossing the crochet to the floor. “If it’s for science.”

She rises up on her knees, and kneels on the couch between his legs, the moment stretching as she bites her lip, makes him wait. He puts a foot on the floor to give her more room, and she arches her back, sliding her fingers down along her breasts and belly, slipping them inside the loose pants she stole from his dryer the night before. He can see her knuckles under the fabric as she touches herself, slow and deliberate.

He catches her scent, can hear how wet she’s getting.

He watches until he can’t stand it anymore, and then he hooks his hand around her thighs and pulls her onto him, hand up under her shirt, kneading her soft breast, thumb brushing over her nipple, lips and teeth against the tendon of her neck. She moans, shifts against him and palms his neck to angle him back so she can delve her tongue in his mouth, and he’s not sure how they get her out of the pants, just enough, one leg pretty much still wrapped around her thigh and she’s shoving down his waistband, thumbing the head of his cock.

She works him, his hips bucking and he pulls her knee up further, fingers slicking against her cunt and she makes a noise, keening a little, and then she’s sinking down on top of him, and she’s hot and wet and he’s missed this so fucking much. It's like coming home, the grip of her around him. 

He kisses her like he can’t get enough of her as she fucks down on him to meet her thrusts, the slap of flesh, the delicious noises from both of them, hot and desperate, and so good. She gets her fingers between them, knuckles against his belly, and it barely takes a flick of her wrist until she’s coming, head thrown back as he digs his fingers into her hips and he finishes in a series of shuddering thrusts, intense and powerful. 

She bursts into laughter, a warm choking noise that he matches, burying his face in her hair, astonished at this, at the expanse of love and want and understanding between them, the absurdity of this huge, life changing emotion, this joy between them, and not a little bit of ridiculousness.

“This couch,” she says, shaking her head.

“I love this couch,” he sighs, “we’re never getting rid of this couch.”

~*~

Early May in Western Michigan is beautiful, but the weather is unpredictable. They’ve had several weeks of sun and warmth, enough so that Bruce has been working late into the evening and she’s been handling dinner the past few days.

They’ve put the new dragon and some of the rest of the mythology zoo on hold for a few weeks. She’s been in California, spanking C-suite executives for Stark, and Bruce has been prepping to go to Boston for the seminar. Nat’s also been finalizing the summer trip to Jakarta, since his travel grant came through, negotiating David’s planned summer stay and figuring out which week Ellie will come out, since she’s planning on staying in Princeton for the summer.

The storm rolling in is already starting to crack across the lake, whitecaps scrubbing at the shoreline, so she finds the canvas tennis shoes and heads across the hedge.

She likes it when he hits that rhythm of working, that groove of productivity and creative expression and humming joy when he responds to her presence but looks dazed in his own head. When he comes out of it, he’s always a little high, happy and loose and handsy. 

Springtime Bruce has been a revelation, or maybe it’s just that he’s revealing new parts of himself to them both, losing the fear, trusting her, but more importantly, trusting himself.

It’s an evolution, of self, of circumstances. For both of them. Moving from artisan to artist. From scraping away at a lifestyle to making a life. She is building a network of community, spreading out tendrils like a plant, connecting and creating and learning. Trusting herself to do good, to make things with her own hands, using her mind and heart. Collaborating in small ways with others, and in fundamental ways with this man who has become a partner, a part of her.

He is trusting himself in new ways as well, this seminar chief amongst the professional risks he’s taking, scarier in some ways than the choice to spend a year not taking commissions, exploring his vision. The deal with Harvard had required him to teach a seminar, as well as observe and study.

He’s approached that with trepidation, but also closely held excitement. He’s been a TA for her a few times in the second semester of her robotics class, has talked a great deal with Jane about expectations, instructional strategies. How art and science intertwine, each creation a hypothesis realized.

He hasn’t slept much in the two night since she’s been home, and since he’s going to Boston in a few days she wants a lazy afternoon with him. They can both afford it.

She finds him working in the house, music going on the big cabinet stereo before she shuts it down to let the sound of the thunder roll in. His papers sprawl over the kitchen table, lesson plans interspersed with sketches, a copy of one of the last papers he’d published broken apart as he weaves in the ideas of energy and motion. His hair is a disaster, but he smells clean and warm, and she puts her cheek on his back, digs her hands in the pockets of his jeans to press against his sensitive hip bones.

“Storm’s almost here,” she says, fitting against him.

He rubs a thumb over her wrist bone, jutting out of his pocket, and shuffles a piece of paper to another point. 

“Come with me,” she coaxes, “we can watch it. Talk shop. Make out a little. I finally found the right fabric for the wings. And Angie’s coming later with tomato plants when the weather clears.”

“Let me just finish--” 

“Later. You need a break. I want a break.”

There’s a thread of tension in his shoulders, a tightening. His focus is so thorough, and she knows that he’s irritated to interrupt it. But this is a thing they’re learning to do. Give up the initial reaction, think it through, listen to the other person about self-care. He does it for her, and she returns the favor. Trust and kindness, and she thinks of that day nearly a year ago, driving to the ballpark with Angie and Peg, Bruce dozing, throat exposed, the considering look Angie had given her then.

He’d slept in front of her, pressed against her. Even when he didn’t trust himself, he’d still put himself in her care. Now he does so consciously, trusts her with it, and that awes her still. Terrifies her. It is an amazing feeling. It allows her to do the same.

He’s giving in, she can tell, but he’s still got his fingers on the papers, and so she just says, “Please,” and presses her mouth to the back of his neck, and then lets go and heads to the hammock strung from the rafters of the garage.

She toes off her shoes and climbs in, and then sees he’s been watching from the doorway. 

“What?” he says, “I get to ogle your ass when you do that.”

“Fair enough,” she says, opening her arms. He holds the hammock steady, tips into it so they can sprawl and settle, fit their arms and legs together. Entwined and entangled. Two houses and two people, lives like roots and branches and a path between leading to each other.

~*~END~*~

**Author's Note:**

> Nitavonteese created a wonderful AU gifset, which feldman wrote a small piece for: http://hwsecretsanta.tumblr.com/post/135147888126/good-fangs-make-good-neighbours-feldman?is_related_post=1
> 
> Then Thassalia snatched the baton and took off running, and it was game on for the both of us.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Gang Aft Agley](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6716572) by [feldman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/feldman/pseuds/feldman)




End file.
